DELEGATED CHANNEL SWITCHING FOR MESH-TYPE NETWORKS

摘要

The invention relates to a channel switching strategy and corresponding protocol for a mesh network which comprises a segment controller, SC, (10) and a large number of outdoor luminaire controllers, OLCs, (20) or other network nodes. A channel switching process is initiated and managed by the SC (10) which transmits a channel switching command to all nodes in the system. Following the actual channel switch, the SC (10) delegates the responsibility to request an orphan node (24) to switch to the new channel to a selected delegate node (22) which may be a neighbor node of the orphan node (24). The selection of the delegate node (22) may be based on a previous link quality or geographical closeness. When an OLC does not receive any response messages for a specified, prolonged period of time, it may scan available frequency bands to find the (new) channel in which the networked system operates at that time.