The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jan. 09, 2024
Filed:
Aug. 01, 2022
Itron, Inc., Liberty Lake, WA (US);
Jerome Bartier, Edinburgh, GB;
Keith Barnes, Waseca, MN (US);
Thomas Uhling, Spokane Valley, WA (US);
Yacine Khaled, Meudon, FR;
Khalid Maallem, Issy les Moulineaux, FR;
Itron, Inc., Liberty Lake, WA (US);
Abstract
Techniques for allocating event offsets within a period of transmission are described. A mains-powered device (MPD) may act as a 'parent' to one or more battery-powered devices (BPDs). The MPD may assign “event offsets” to each BPD. The event offset is a time by which the BPD's timeslot is “offset” from the start of a periodic cycle of transmissions by the MPD. Thus, each event offset indicates a time that the BPD must be “awake,” i.e., operating its radio receiver and/or performing other functionality. A BPD may spend a substantial fraction of its time in a “sleep” mode, wherein less power is used and fewer functions are performed than during a period of that BPD's event offset. Another BPD may have a different event offset. Communications by the MPD with each child BPD may be substantially uniformly distributed over the period. To increase efficiency, groups of BPDs may receive multicasts.