An arbitration system between multiple devices that are capable of performing near owner maintenance is used to prevent the battery drain that would accompany repeated maintenance connections from the multiple devices within the same time period. With reference to the advertisement beacon packets 500 of FIG. 5, the maintained bit 503 of the status field S1 of a near owner advertisement packet 501 is used to indicate when a wireless accessory has received a maintenance connection during a key rotation period. The maintained bit can be cleared at the beginning of each key rotation period.
FIG. 6 illustrates a method 600 of operation on a wireless accessory to transition from near owner advertisement mode to wild advertisement mode. Method 600 can be performed by any wireless device, wireless accessory, or wireless accessory device as described herein. In one embodiment, a wireless device can receive a connection from an owner device to perform maintenance operations (block 601). The wireless device can then set a maintained bit in the status field of the advertisement beacon (block 602). The maintained bit can be set for the duration of the connection by the owner device and for a period of time after the connection is disconnected. After disconnection, the wireless device can beacon in near owner mode using the near owner advertisement packet (block 603).
The wireless device can clear the maintained bit during the next key roll on the wireless device (block 604). Clearing the maintained bit indicates to nearby owner devices that the device will soon transition to wild mode unless near owner maintenance is performed and indicates to any nearby owner devices that a maintenance operation can be performed to prevent a wild mode transition.
