Abstract: A system and method for operating a wireless network provides for sending a wakeup tone, periodically waking up from a sleep mode to listen for the wakeup tone, upon receiving the wakeup tone, listening for at least one second tone, the at least one second tone being one of (i) a tone in a frequency different from the wakeup tone and (ii) a pattern of tones including at least one frequency different from the wakeup tone, and upon receiving the at least one second tone, performing an action based on the at least one second tone.

Abstract: In a network installation method and system, a first message is broadcast, a number of second messages received in response to the first message is counted and/or a type of at least one of the second messages is determined, and it is determined whether a location of a first node of a network is suitable based on the determined number of received second messages and/or the determined type of received second message(s).

Abstract: A method and system for adaptively monitoring a communication link of a wireless sensor network, which includes measuring a quality of the communications link at a beginning of the monitoring period and at an end of the monitoring period, decreasing the monitoring period if a change in the quality of the communication link measured at the beginning and end of the monitoring period exceeds a predefined threshold value, and increasing the monitoring period if the measured quality is essentially the same at the beginning and end of the monitoring period.

Abstract: A method of reducing an energy consumption of a wireless network, the method including periodically entering a sleep mode by a receiver node, broadcasting a signal simultaneously across a wide band frequency range, upon waking up from the sleep mode, listening by the receiver node to only a first narrow part of the wide band frequency range, the receiver node subsequently either returning to sleep if a signal strength of the broadcasted signal is less than a predefined signal strength threshold, or staying awake for an additional period of time if the signal strength of the broadcasted signal is greater than the predefined signal strength threshold.

Abstract: Embodiments of a link assessment and frequency monitoring system for use in wireless sensor networks are described. In one embodiment, each frequency utilized by links coupling two or more nodes in the network is sampled to determine a noise measure for each frequency. A correlation measure based on the distance between the noise measures for each pair of frequencies is determined. The frequencies are then clustered into a number of groups of frequencies based on the correlation measure between each pair of frequencies, such that the number of groups is less than the total number of frequencies. A representative frequency for each group of frequencies is selected, and a link quality assessment for each pair of nodes in the network is performed for the representative frequency of each group of frequencies.