Hi PawelPl,
I can summarize a few options, but if you require deterministic timing of messages (fixed interval), and lowest power possible at all devices, you will need to use a shared channel. In ANT terminology however, the "receiver" would be running a master channel while the "transmitters" would be running a slave channel to pair to the "receiver". This would allow you to address up to 65534 devices per master channel. To allow for transmitters to come and go from the network, you have a few options
One would be to use the auto shared channel reference design to assign new devices addresses as they pair to the shared channel.
Another would be to consistently address 100 different addresses, and have the slaves pre-designated with a shared address each so that no assignment would have to take place, but the master could be attempting to address slaves which are not present.
Another option could be to use a background scanning channel on the receiver to listen for master channels which are broadcasting. You could adjust the power consumption by changing the search waveform. However, this carries the issue of pseudo-deterministic latency, as you will have a wide time range in which you may hear from a transmitting device. You will also miss messages from these other devices. You would also need to use the other 7 channels on the device to perform bi-directional communication as needed using conventional slave channels.
I'd recommend checking out these app notes as well from the
Downloads page:
ANT Channel Search and Background Scanning Channel
Auto Shared Channel Master Example
Cheers,
Harrison
