Tracking of and communication with mobile terminals using a battery-powered wireless network infrastructure

Abstract

There is provided a method of reducing energy consumption of network infrastructure nodes in a wireless network, the method comprising: (a) turning a transmitter and a receiver of the network infrastructure node to a power-off state; b) powering-on the transmitter of the network infrastructure node for a limited transmission time frame; c) during the transmission time frame, transmitting a beacon message comprising an identifier of the network infrastructure node, channel characteristics of the network infrastructure node and a powering-on schedule of the receiver of the network infrastructure node, for allowing mobile terminal nodes in the network to communicate with the network infrastructure node, where the mobile terminal nodes are almost continuously in a power-on state; d) powering-on the receiver of the network infrastructure node during a limited reception time frame in accordance with the schedule, for enabling the receiver to receive messages transmitted by the mobile terminal nodes in the network if required; e) repeating steps a) to d) periodically. There is further provided a battery-powered network infrastructure node which reduces energy consumption. There is further provided a battery-powered wireless network with an energy management for network infrastructure node. There is further provided a method of increasing probability of detection of rapidly moving clusters of mobile terminal nodes in a wireless network.