A LOW-POWER, LOW BANDWIDTH PROTOCOL FOR REMOTE WIRELESS TERMINALS

We present a low bandwidth protocol for wireless multi-media terminals targeted towards low power consumption on the terminal side. With the widespread use of portable computing devices, low power has become a major design criterion. One way of minimizing power consumption is to perform all tasks, other than managing hardware for the display and in put, on a stationary workstation and exchange information between that workstation and the portable terminal via a wireless link. A protocol for such a system that emphasizes low bandwidth and low power require ments is presented herein. Such a protocol should address the issue of noisy wireless channels. We describe error correction and retransmiss ion methods capable of dealing with burst error noise up to BERs of 10 (-3). The final average bandwidth required is 140 Kbits/sec for 8-bit color applications.