Patent ID: 8645976

Claim:
An apparatus configured to receive a signal in accordance with a protocol stack that contains a physical layer, a medium access control (MAC) layer, a control layer and a stream layer, comprising: a processor; a receiver stack processing system configured to provide the control and stream layers; a media processing system configured to provide the physical and MAC layers; and an application programming interface (API) to support communication between the receiver stack processing system and the media processing system; wherein said receiver stack processing system is configured to invoke said API to instruct said media processing system to replace a current set of signal acquisition parameters currently used by said media processing system for signal acquisition, with an initial set of signal acquisition parameters that was initially provisioned for said media processing system to use for signal acquisition, wherein said receiver stack processing system is configured to determine when a candidate set of signal acquisition parameters and said initial set of signal acquisition parameters are mutually exclusive such that no signal acquisition parameters of said candidate set of signal acquisition parameters are included in said initial set of signal acquisition parameters, wherein said receiver stack processing system is configured to, when said candidate set of signal acquisition parameters are mutually exclusive of said initial set of signal acquisition parameters, replace said candidate set of signal acquisition parameters with said initial set of signal acquisition parameters, wherein said candidate set of signal acquisition parameters and said initial set of signal acquisition parameters each comprise a plurality of acquisition parameters, wherein said receiver stack processing system is configured to invoke said API when said candidate set of signal acquisition parameters that would otherwise become the current set of signal acquisition parameters is mutually exclusive with respect to said initial set of signal acquisition parameters, and wherein said signal acquisition parameters include signal acquisition frequencies.