Managing master and slave devices in a communications network
AssigneeNokia Corporation
InventorsThomas Block, Christian Zechlin
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Systems and methods are provided for communication between master and slave devices on a network, such as a piconet or Bluetooth network. A master notifies the slave of a change in the link supervision timeout associated with the piconet. The slave stores the new link supervision timeout value and uses this value to control subsequent network-related operations, such as inquiry and paging procedures within a scatternet. The slave, aware of the link supervision timeout value for its existing connection may set an activity time limit for procedures in order to return to the physical channel of the piconet before a timeout connection loss to reestablish contact with the piconet master.
Claims22
A method comprising:
- receiving at a slave device a link supervision timeout value from a master device in a piconet;
- determining that an execution time of a network-related task to be performed by the slave device exceeds a duration of time corresponding to the link supervision timeout value received from the master device;
- dividing the network-related task into segments, wherein each segment is executable within the duration of time corresponding to the link supervision timeout value;
- and
- executing a first segment of the network-related task.
Apparatus comprising:
- a slave host;
- and
- a slave controller configured to perform a method comprising:
- receiving a link supervision timeout value from a master device;
- storing said link supervision timeout value;
- and
- sending said link supervision timeout value to the slave host, in response to receiving said link supervision timeout value,
- wherein, in response to receiving said link supervision timeout value, said apparatus is configured to:
- determining that an execution time of a network-related task to be performed by the apparatus exceeds a duration of time corresponding to the link supervision timeout value;
- and
- execute the network-related task divided in segments, wherein each segment is executed in a length of time less than the link supervision timeout value.
An apparatus, comprising:
- integrated circuitry configured to receive a link supervision timeout value from a master device;
- integrated circuitry configured to store said link supervision timeout value;
- integrated circuitry configured to receive a network-related task from a slave host;
- integrated circuitry configured to partition said network-related task into one or more segmented tasks, wherein the expected execution time of each segmented task is less than said link supervision timeout value;
- and
- integrated circuitry configured to execute the one or more segmented tasks sequentially.
An apparatus comprising:
- means for receiving a link supervision timeout value from a master device in a piconet;
- means for determining that an execution time of a network-related task to be performed exceeds a duration of time corresponding to the link supervision timeout value received from the master device;
- means for dividing the network-related task into segments, wherein each segment is executable within the duration of time corresponding to the link supervision timeout value;
- and
- means for executing a first segment of the network-related task.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.