Patent ID: 8817659

Claim:
A method of switching modes in a TDMA (time-divisional multiple access) serial data communication network having a plurality of interconnected nodes, the method comprising: during a first mode, issuing an instruction to said nodes, wherein each of said nodes includes a plurality of mode-dependent configurations in which the mode-dependent configurations of said nodes comprise different TDMA schedules for identifying time slots in which the corresponding node has been granted access to the TDMA serial data communication network, said instruction identifying a next mode of the data communications network, wherein the instruction is broadcasted to said nodes in a same time slot in the different TDMA schedules; terminating said first mode; and following said termination of said first mode, reconfiguring each of said nodes in accordance with the configuration corresponding to said next mode identified by said instruction, wherein the plurality of interconnected nodes are instructed to select a same TDMA schedule at initialization or wake-up.