US Patent 7623828 Managing master and slave devices in a communications network

Systems and methods are provided for communication between master and slave devices on a network, such as a piconet or Bluetooth network. A master notifies the slave of a change in the link supervision timeout associated with the piconet. The slave stores the new link supervision timeout value and uses this value to control subsequent network-related operations, such as inquiry and paging procedures within a scatternet. The slave, aware of the link supervision timeout value for its existing connection may set an activity time limit for procedures in order to return to the physical channel of the piconet before a timeout connection loss to reestablish contact with the piconet master.