A portable communications module of FIG. The device includes a housing constructed to at least partially enclose at least one portion of an AMR system device. Further, each node of the plurality of nodes may be configured to have a function of acting as a first node, which sends a first message to other nodes of the plurality of nodes. The wireless devices having the pre-allocated codes can transmit a particular code over the random access channel as a request for resources that uniquely identifies the requester.