Ota Reprogramming Overview; Cancelling Ota Reprogramming; Error Conditions/Recovery - GE MDS SD Series Technical Manual

OTA Reprogramming Overview

The "Root" is the central location from which polling originates. Other
locations in the network should be designated as "Nodes" which are the
receiving stations. Over-the-air firmware upgrades should always be
initiated from the Root. This ensures that all radios in the network will
be properly updated.
Once an OTA reprogram session has started, the initiating radio's user
selects either the active or inactive image stored in its non-volatile
storage which is copied to all the other radios in the network.
The initiator broadcasts a series of messages to one or more remote
Nodes to accomplish the reprogramming process. The "broadcast"
method is used to program the greatest number of radios in the shortest
amount of time, however, the initiating station remains unaware of the
number or success of downstream radios participating in reprogram-
ming.
During reprogramming, the status of the reprogramming will be avail-
able on all the radios participating in the process. Because the initiator
is "broadcast-only" this status can only indicate progress toward
sending out of all of the messages. On the Nodes, the progress toward
completion of reception of reprogramming information is indicated.
Receiving stations can automatically reboot to the new image after suc-
cessful reprogramming. Alternatively, there is an OTA reboot command
that can be broadcast from the initiator to all receiving stations. This last
option instructs the receivers to reboot to a specific firmware revision if
available, and not already running at that revision.

Cancelling OTA Reprogramming

During the reprogramming operation the user has the ability to cancel
reprogramming at anytime either on the initiator, which will affect all
radios, or on individual receiving stations. Note that cancelling repro-
gramming at the initiator results in all radios in the network having only
one (instead of two) applications programmed in their image banks.
That is, the "inactive" image (which was only partially upgraded) and
will be corrupt and unusable until reprogrammed at a later time.

Error Conditions/Recovery

Other than cancelling the reprogramming process, there are few error
conditions that the initiator knows or can do anything about. Receiving
radios perform checks and verification on the incoming data. If after the
end of the reprogramming sequence a radio still has an invalid image
(for whatever reason) the radio will not reboot but continue running with
its active, and valid image.
MDS 05-4846A01, Rev. H SD Series Technical Manual 97