System and method for personal area network (PAN) distributed global optimization

#1. Field of the Invention

#This invention generally relates to devices communicating on a Personal Area Network (PAN), and more particularly, to a system and method for actively evaluating and adjusting device energy consumption in a PAN, such as a Bluetooth wireless communications network.

#2. Description of the Related Art

#FIG. 1 depicts a Bluetooth point-to-point piconet and a Bluetooth point-to-multipoint piconet (prior art).

#FIG. 2 depicts a Bluetooth scatternet with two Bluetooth piconets (prior art).

#FIG. 3 is a schematic block diagram depicting the system for actively evaluating and adjusting device energy consumption in a personal area network (PAN) in accordance with the present invention.

#FIG. 3 is a schematic block diagram depicting the system 300 for actively evaluating and adjusting device energy consumption in a personal area network (PAN) in accordance with the present invention. Shown are devices 302, 304, and 306, communicating in a wireless communications network. However, the invention is not limited to any particular number of devices. A first device 302 polls the other devices 304 and 306 to determine respective energy metrics and establishes network communications between device 302 and devices 304 and 306 responsive to the energy metrics. The first device 302 establishes network communications between devices 304 and 306 to minimize energy consumption for devices with low energy metrics. The parameters involved in determining low energy metrics are explained below. The polling and network communications are accomplished through wireless communications represented by reference designators 308 and 310. Although the PAN may be a Bluetooth compliant network (as described below), it will be appreciated that the use of the present invention system in other communication networks would be consistent with this disclosure.

#FIG. 4 is a schematic block diagram depicting the system 300 of FIG. 3 in further detail. A plurality of devices (shown are devices 402, 404 and 406) communicate in a Bluetooth wireless communications piconet. The first device 402 functions as a master device to establish network communications rules with slave devices 404 and 406. Note that the roles of the devices in the network can change, as explained above in the Background. That is, a device can be a master device in one instance and can later assume the role of a slave device while a former slave device assumes the role of the master device. This is called role switching. Role switching can occur in response to device energy metrics, for example, the capacity remaining on the device battery. Polling and network communications are accomplished through wireless communications represented by reference designators 408, 410, 412, and 414. In some aspects of the system 300, master device 402 polls slave devices 404 and 406 to receive slave device identification data, and the master device 402 retrieves energy metric data from a memory 416 in response to receiving the identification data for the slave devices 404 and 406. For example, the memory may include energy metric data for a list of popular devices, or data for devices with which the master device has recently interfaced. In some aspects of the system 300, the master device 402 polls the slave devices 404 and 406 to receive slave device energy metric data. That is, the slave devices 404 and 406 provide the energy metric data to the master device 402.

#For those devices unable to support the energy metric exchange, device parameters are supplied to the master device or to the master device memory. These parameters, such as the device-type, the size of the device battery, or standard or default energy consumption, enable the master device 402 to include these devices in the network communications.