Because of the ever-increasing use of wireless devices, the existing RF spectrum is becoming increasingly busy and crowded. As more and more devices try to share the same communications channels, the use of traditional communications protocols may cause the existing channels to reach the limits of their capacity, resulting in network congestion, communications delays, and sometimes even loss of service. For example, some communications protocols use a polling technique: a device that has data to transmit may wait until it is polled by a base station. After being given permission to transmit in the form of this poll, the device may transmit some or all of the data it has queued up for transmission. This polling technique may prevent multiple devices from trying to transmit at the same time and interfering with each other. However, if the responses are short, and numerous devices are being separately polled by the base station in this manner, the overhead of this polling protocol may use up a significant portion of the bandwidth, resulting in inefficient use of the channel. One technique for reducing the overhead consumed by this technique is to poll multiple devices in the same poll. However, this technique may create addition problems as multiple devices respond to the poll at the same time and thus interfere with each other.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds