Patent ID: 7573835

Claim:
A method of communicating information in a communication network including a plurality of hierarchically addressed nodes each including a child or parent hierarchical address relationship in which an address of each child node includes information identifying an address of a parent node, the method comprising: (a) receiving at a current node communication packets transmitted from 1-hop neighbor nodes within a communication range of the current node, said communication packets identifying (1) 1-hop neighbor node addresses of the respective 1-hop neighbor nodes transmitting the packets, (2) a number defining how many on-tree neighbor nodes have the child or parent hierarchical address relationship with the respective 1-hop neighbor nodes transmitting the packets, and (3) forwarding node addresses of forwarding nodes from which the received packets are to be rebroadcast; (b) storing said 1-hop neighbor node addresses and said number of on-tree neighbor nodes; (c) when a received packet at the current node identifies the current node as a forwarding node which should rebroadcast the received packet, identifying based on the stored 1-hop neighbor addresses and the stored number of on-tree neighbor nodes, each 1-hop neighbor node which should be a forwarding node instructed to rebroadcast information included in a communication packet received from the current node; (d) producing at the current node a rebroadcast communication packet including information to be rebroadcast, an address of the current node, and addresses of forwarding nodes identified in step (c) when the received packet at the current node identifies the current node as a forwarding node which should rebroadcast the received information; and (e) transmitting from the current node the rebroadcast communication packet produced in step (d).