Wireless Repeater Protocol Unequal Time Slot Allocation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Wireless edge devices in self-storage facilities face challenges with short battery life due to high power consumption, leading to frequent battery replacements and potential system failure if they cannot communicate effectively to maintain automated access and security mechanisms.
Innovation Solution
A communications protocol that allocates unequal time slots to repeaters within a beacon cycle, ensuring message delivery through a pool of identifiers, reducing power consumption by optimizing repeater activity and allowing for both synchronous and asynchronous transmissions to maintain system functionality.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If wireless edge devices use high power transmission to ensure reliable communication, then communication reliability is improved, but battery life deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements periodic beacon cycles with structured time slots for communication. Edge devices transmit data only during allocated time slots within each beacon cycle, rather than continuously or on-demand. This periodic structure reduces overall power consumption while maintaining reliable communication through scheduled transmissions and acknowledgments.
Solution Approach 2:
The communication frame is segmented into distinct time slots including beacon period, data period, and acknowledgment period. This segmentation allows efficient resource allocation and reduces idle listening time for edge devices, thereby extending battery life while ensuring reliable data delivery through structured communication phases.
2Reliability
If wireless edge devices use frequent transmissions to maintain system functionality, then system reliability is improved, but power consumption increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent establishes continuous beacon cycles that maintain system functionality without requiring frequent individual transmissions. Each beacon cycle contains structured periods for data transmission and acknowledgment, ensuring continuous monitoring and communication while optimizing power usage through efficient frame structure and reduced idle listening.
3Productivity
If the system uses synchronous communication protocols to ensure timely message delivery, then communication efficiency is improved, but battery life deteriorates due to continuous synchronization
Solution Approach 1:
The patent uses periodic beacon cycles with predetermined time slots for synchronous communication. Edge devices synchronize only during these periodic intervals rather than maintaining continuous synchronization, reducing power consumption while maintaining communication efficiency through structured data and acknowledgment periods within each cycle.
Data Source
AI summary
A pool of identifiers are individually used by corresponding particular ones of a repeaters. A communications protocol as used by the repeaters provides time slots to be used by these repeaters when making their transmissions. Each of the time slots is associated with individual corresponding ones of the identifiers, though the time slots are allocated unequally amongst the identifiers such that at least one of the identifiers has more time slots allocated to that identifier, over a given beacon cycle, than others of the identifiers.