Mobile telecommunications device and service

Abstract

A highly fault tolerant method of radio communication of information in the form of a message packet employs a distributed network of transmitter/receivers `transceivers` each having a unique identification ('ID') number. An initiating transceiver creates a message packet having the ID of a transceiver intended to receive the message packet. It then broadcasts the message packet to transceivers within its transmission range. Each transceiver which receives the message packet checks to see if there are errors and sends an acknowledgement if no errors. The transceivers determine valid message packets by determining if the message has not expired, if it has not been seen before and there were no errors in the received message packet. The transceiver also determines if the transceiver ID in the message packet match its own transceiver ID, and if it does, is the message has been successfully transmitted to its intended transceiver. If the message packet is valid and the transceiver IDs do not match, the transceiver broadcasts the message to other local transceivers until a predetermined number of acknowledgements are received, or until the message expires. The transceivers which receive the message packet repeat the process.