Patent ID: 7965668

Claim:
A method of transitioning a plurality of wireless devices between a plurality of states having increasing resource intensity from a least resource intensive state to a most resource intensive second state comprising: ranking all power-on wireless devices from highest priority to lowest priority; assigning a respective subset of the power-on wireless devices to each state based on the ranking of all power-on wireless devices, such that the priorities of power-on wireless devices of the subset assigned to a more resource intensive state of the plurality of states are higher than the priorities of power-on wireless devices of a subset assigned to a less resource intensive state of the plurality of states; and signalling to the wireless devices to instruct them to implement any change in state, wherein ranking all power-on wireless devices comprises: determining a state priority for each of the power-on wireless devices, the state priority for at least one of the plurality of devices being determined as a function of packet priority information; ranking each of the power-on wireless devices based on the state priority of the devices and occupancy of a buffer of the devices, wherein regardless of the state priority, devices with a full buffer are ranked higher than devices with an empty buffer.