A low power consumption protocol for low power communication devices
attached to an asynchronous network is described. In this protocol, a
communication device is used as a high communication duty cycle Mediation
Device (MD), thus permitting other communication devices to use a low
communication duty cycle framing structure. The MD functions as a storage
and retrieval service for messages between two devices when one device is
not able to communicate. When the previously unavailable device becomes
available, it can check in with the MD to retrieve any missed messages and
respond to these messages accordingly. In a communication network, each of
the low power communication devices can be configured to behave as MD's
for a small amount of time. Sharing this responsibility among all
communication devices in the network allows each device to maintain an low
average communication duty cycle. This technique is applicable to a low
power, low cost, zero-configuring, self-organizing, asynchronous network.
