SYNCHRONIZATION OF NODELESS FREQUENCY-HOPPING COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM

摘要

A radio communication system comprising a plurality (or partition) of radio transceivers arranged for mutual communication wherein in order to determine the total number of transceivers in the partition the following provisions are made; (a) each radio transceiver includes storage means for a table of addresses which identify other radio transceivers, which table being loaded into the storage means during operation and comprising data received from other radio transceivers, the said table being empty at the instant of switch on; (b) each radio transceiver being arranged to broadcast periodically data appertaining to its table of addresses in addition to its own address in order to permit other neighbouring radio transceivers to augment their address tables, to the end that all radio transceivers have a table comprising the same address data whereby the total number of radio transceivers known to any one radio transceiver is the number in its table plus one. With a knowledge of the total number in a network, growth in the network by addition of single transceivers or merging groups can be carried out efficiently e.g by re-synchronizing only the smaller group in a frequency hopping network.