1. A method for communicating in a wireless network including a plurality of nodes, comprising:
partitioning each periodic announcement cycle of a communication schedule into a set of time slots, including a set of management time slots, a set of beacon time slots, and a set of superframe time slots;
broadcasting management frames during the management slot, wherein the management frames specify beacons;
broadcasting the beacons during the beacon-slots, wherein the beacons specify superframe; and
transmitting the superframes during the superframe time slots.
2. The method of claim 1, wherein the network includes a plurality of star networks, and wherein each star network includes a central parent node and a plurality of leaf nodes, and wherein the central nodes are a wired backbone.
3. The method of claim 2, wherein a particular leaf node simultaneously has multiple central parent nodes.
4. The method of claim 1, wherein the leaf nodes include sensors, and the central nodes aggregate data acquired by the sensors.
5. The method of claim 1, wherein the transmitting uses frequency channel hopping.
6. The method of claim 1, wherein the network includes mobile nodes.
7. The method of claim 1, wherein the broadcasting and transmitting uses an announcement channel.
8. The method of claim 1, wherein the transmitting uses a channel that is different than the announcement channel.
9. The method of claim 1, wherein a time length of the announcement cycle can vary in different parts of the network.
10. The method of claim 1, wherein the time slots are selected and reserved using a distributed process.
11. The method of claim 1, wherein a time length of the announcement cycle varies dynamically.
12. The method of claim 1, wherein the nodes start transmitting the superframes simultaneously after a last beacon time slot in the announcement cycle, and the nodes use different channels or a channel hopping sequence.
13. The method of claim 1, wherein the superframes have different sizes.
14. The method of claim 1, wherein the beacon includes a field for specifying a size of superframe time slots.
15. The method of claim 1, wherein the beacon includes a field for specifying a channel index for the superframes.
16. The method of claim 1, wherein the beacon includes a field for beacon payload data.
17. The method of claim 1, wherein the management frames include a Beacon-Slot Request, which is used by a particular node to announce an intention to reserve and use a particular beacon time slot.
18. The method of claim 17, wherein the management frames include a Beacon-Slot Response frame, which is used to indicate that the intention to use and reserve will cause a problem for the network.
19. The method of claim 1, wherein the superframe time slot includes guaranteed time slots (GTS) for transmitting GTS frames, and wherein in the GTS frames include additional data frames.
20. The method of claim 1, wherein the superframe includes an indication whether the superframe is to be acknowledges immediately after being received.
21. The method of claim 1, wherein the network has a mesh topology for communicating with the nodes via multiple hops.
22. The method of claim 1, wherein resource of the network are allocated in a distributed manner.
23. The method of claim 22, wherein the resources include time and frequencies.
The claims below are in addition to those above.
All refrences to claim(s) which appear below refer to the numbering after this setence.
1. A method for generating an object-oriented model from a vocabulary, the method comprising the operations of:
(a) receiving the vocabulary comprising terms and sentential forms, each of the terms comprising a word or phrase representing a concept, each of the sentential forms comprising a prepositional statement representing a fact type and including at least one placeholder, the placeholder being specified by a term;
(b) automatically creating a first class for each of the terms in the vocabulary;
(c) making a classification superclass to be a superclass for each of the first classes, wherein the classification superclass is a subclass of a fact superclass, wherein the fact superclass is a superclass whose instances are facts, such that each instance of the first class represents a fact that a thing is classified to be an instance of the concept represented by the corresponding term rather than representing an instance of the concept, and wherein the classification superclass is a superclass whose instances are classifications;
(d) automatically creating a second class for each sentential form in the vocabulary;
(e) making the fact superclass to be a superclass for each of the second classes, wherein the fact superclass is a superclass whose instances are facts, such that each instance of the second class represents a fact that is an instance of the fact type represented by the corresponding sentential form; and
wherein acts (a)-(e) are performed so as to limit the granularity of encapsulation of information in each of the first classes and the second classes to no larger than the representation of a single fact.
2. The method of claim 1 further comprising:
(f) creating a package; and,
(g) making each of the classes created in operations (b) and (d) to be a member of the package.
3. The method of claim 1 wherein operation (b) comprises: associating the first class with a name, the name including, as at least a portion of the name, the term for which the first class is created.
4. The method of claim 1 wherein operation (b) comprises:
creating an attribute in the first class, the value of the attribute in an instance of the first class representing a thing being classified.
5. The method of claim 1 wherein operation (d) comprises:
associating each of the second classes with a name, the name including, as at least a portion of the name, the sentential form for which the second class is created.
6. The method of claim 2 wherein the vocabulary has a name and wherein the method further comprises:
associating the package with a name based on the name of the vocabulary.
7. The method of claim 1 further comprising:
creating a thing superclass whose instances are representations of things;
creating the fact superclass class whose instances are representations of facts;
making the fact superclass to be a subclass of the thing superclass;
creating the classification superclass whose instances are representations of classifications;
making the classification superclass to be a subclass of the fact superclass;
creating a text superclass whose instances are representations of texts; and
making the text superclass to be a subclass of the thing superclass.
8. The method of claim 1 wherein, for each placeholder of each sentential form in the vocabulary, operation (d) comprises the operation of:
creating an attribute for the placeholder within the class created for the corresponding sentential form.
9. The method of claim 8 wherein the operation of creating an attribute for the placeholder includes the operation of:
assigning a name to the attribute using the text of the term specified for the placeholder.
10. The method of claim 8 wherein the operation of creating an attribute for the placeholder further includes the operation of:
setting the type of the attribute to be a general type representing a thing, the thing being the subject of facts expressed by the vocabulary.
11. An article of manufacture comprising:
a machine-accessible medium including data that, when accessed by a machine, causes the machine to perform operations comprising:
(a) receiving a vocabulary comprising terms and sentential forms, each of the terms comprising a word or phrase representing a concept, each of the sentential forms comprising a prepositional statement representing a fact type and including at least one placeholder, the placeholder being specified by a term;
(b) automatically creating a first class for each of the terms in the vocabulary;
(c) making a classification superclass to be a superclass for each of the first classes, wherein the classification superclass is a subclass of a fact superclass, such that each instance of the first class represents a fact that a thing is classified to be an instance of the concept represented by the corresponding term rather than representing an instance of the concept, and wherein the classification superclass is a superclass whose instances are classifications;
(d) automatically creating a second class for each sentential form in the vocabulary;
(e) making the fact superclass to be a superclass for each of the second classes, wherein the fact superclass is a superclass whose instances are facts, such that each instance of the second class represents a fact that is an instance of the fact type represented by the corresponding sentential form; and
wherein acts (a)-(e) are performed such that the granularity of encapsulation of information in each of the first classes and the second classes is no larger than the representation of a single fact.
12. The article of manufacture of claim 11 wherein the data further comprise data that, when accessed by the machine, cause the machine to perform operations comprising:
(f) creating a package; and,
(g) making each of the classes created in operations (b) and (d) to be a member of the package.
13. The article of manufacture of claim 11 wherein the data causing the machine to perform the operation (b) comprise data that, when accessed by the machine, cause the machine to perform operations comprising:
associating the first class with a name, the name including, as at least a portion of the name, the term for which the first class is created.
14. The article of manufacture of claim 11 wherein the data causing the machine to perform the operation (b) comprise data that, when accessed by the machine, cause the machine to perform operations comprising:
creating an attribute in the first class, the value of the attribute in an instance of the first class representing a thing being classified.
15. The article of manufacture of claim 11 wherein the data causing the machine to perform the operation (d) comprise data that, when accessed by the machine, cause the machine to perform operations comprising:
associating each of the second classes with a name, the name including, as at least a portion of the name, the sentential form for which the second class is created.
16. The article of manufacture of claim 12 wherein the vocabulary has a name and wherein the data further comprise data that, when accessed by the machine, cause the machine to perform operations comprising:
associating the package with a name based on the name of the vocabulary.
17. The article of manufacture of claim 11 wherein the data further comprise data that, when accessed by the machine, cause the machine to perform operations comprising:
creating a thing superclass whose instances are representations of things;
creating a the fact superclass whose instances are representations of facts;
making the fact superclass to be a subclass of the thing superclass;
creating the classification superclass whose instances are representations of classifications;
making the classification superclass to be a subclass of the fact superclass;
creating a text superclass whose instances are representations of texts; and
making the text superclass to be a subclass of the first general class.
18. The article of manufacture of claim 11 wherein the data causing the machine to perform the operation (c) comprise data that, when accessed by the machine, cause the machine to perform operations comprising:
for each placeholder of each sentential form in the vocabulary, creating an attribute for the placeholder within the class created for the corresponding sentential form.
19. The article of manufacture of claim 18 wherein the data causing the machine to perform the operation of creating an attribute for the placeholder comprise data that, when accessed by the machine, cause the machine to perform operations comprising:
assigning a name to the attribute using the text of the term specified for the placeholder.
20. The article of manufacture of claim 18 wherein the data causing the machine to perform the operation of creating an attribute for the placeholder further comprise data that, when accessed by the machine, cause the machine to perform operations comprising:
setting the type of the attribute to be a general type representing a thing, the thing being the subject of facts expressed by the vocabulary.
21. A system comprising:
a processor; and
a memory coupled to the processor, the memory containing instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to:
(a) receive a vocabulary comprising terms and sentential forms, each of the terms comprising a word or phrase representing a concept, each of the sentential forms comprising a prepositional statement representing a fact type and including at least one placeholder, the placeholder being specified by a term;
(b) automatically create a first class for each of the terms in the vocabulary;
(c) cause a classification superclass to be a superclass for each of the first classes, wherein the classification superclass is a subclass of a fact superclass, such that each instance of the first class represents a fact that a thing is classified to be an instance of the concept represented by the corresponding term rather than representing an instance of the concept, and wherein the classification superclass is a superclass whose instances are classifications;
(d) automatically create a second class for each sentential form in the vocabulary;
(e) cause the fact superclass to be a superclass for each of the second classes, wherein the fact superclass is a superclass whose instances are facts, such that each instance of the second class represents a fact that is an instance of the fact type represented by the corresponding sentential form; and
wherein acts (a)-(e) are performed such that the granularity of encapsulation of information in each of the first classes and the second classes is no larger than the representation of a single fact.
22. The system of claim 21 wherein the instructions further comprise instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to:
(e) create a package; and,
(f) make each of the classes created in (b) and (d) to be a member of the package.
23. The system of claim 21 wherein the instructions causing the processor to create a first class for each of the terms in the vocabulary comprise instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to:
associate each of the first classes with a name, the name including, as at least a portion of the name, the term for which the first class is created.
24. The system of claim 21 wherein the instructions causing the processor to create a first class for each of the terms in the vocabulary comprise instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to:
create an attribute in the first class, the value of the attribute in an instance of the first class representing a thing being classified.
25. The system of claim 21 wherein the instructions causing the processor to create a second class for each sentential form in the vocabulary comprise instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to:
associate the second class with a name, the name including, as at least a portion of the name, the sentential form for which the second class is created.
26. The system of claim 22 wherein the vocabulary has a name and wherein the instructions further comprise instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to:
associate the package with a name based on the name of the vocabulary.
27. The system of claim 21 wherein the instructions further comprise instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to:
create a thing superclass whose instances are representations of things;
create the fact superclass whose instances are representations of facts;
make fact superclass to be a subclass of the thing superclass;
create the classification superclass whose instances are representations of classifications;
make the classification superclass to be a subclass of the fact superclass;
create a text superclass whose instances are representations of texts; and
make text superclass to be a subclass of the thing superclass.
28. The system of claim 21 wherein the instructions causing the processor to create a second class for each of the sentential forms in the vocabulary comprise instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to:
for each placeholder of each sentential form in the vocabulary, create an attribute for the placeholder within the class created for the corresponding sentential form.
29. The system of claim 28 wherein the instructions causing the processor to create an attribute for the placeholder comprise instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to:
assign a name to the attribute using the text of the term specified for the placeholder.
30. The system of claim 28 wherein the instructions causing the processor to create an attribute for the placeholder further comprise instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to:
set the type of the attribute to be a general type representing a thing, the thing being the subject of facts expressed by the vocabulary.