1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to wireless communications and, more particularly, to the creation of an empirical map of wireless coverage which quantifies the quality of wireless coverage over an area and resolves variations of coverage quality over the area to within the geographic accuracy of available location systems, such as the Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) system.
2. Background Description
Coverage areas for communications are defined only approximately by wireless carriers. Carriers do provide geographic maps of predicted coverage areas; however, existing maps do not define the precise degree of the coverage area or the locations of gaps within the advertised area. The imprecision of the existing maps is on the order of miles. Gaps in coverage may be caused by natural landscape features such as low lying valleys or by man made obstructions such as tunnels or tall buildings. Wireless communications providers may provide a disclaimer with their coverage map as an implied acknowledgment of such gaps.
In order to maintain communications for mobile applications, it is necessary that the mobile communications device be located in an area of reliable communications. For example, automobiles when stationary must be located in the reliable area. Today, the user must find such an area by chance or make a choice based upon personal experience. To maintain communications in a vehicle in motion is even more difficult. A moving automobile or truck on a highway will pass in and out of areas where communications are reliable as it moves. Currently, there is no way to predict where the transitions from good to bad communications occur.
The Global Positioning System (GPS) uses a set of twenty-four orbiting satellites to allow ground-based users to determine their locations. Systems for automotive use have dropped in price to the point where they can be purchased for a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. These systems are either built in to the vehicle (e.g., the Cadillac On-Star system) or are portable in a lap top computer (e.g., the Delorme GPS Tripmate system). Such systems, however, are essentially passive, one way systems; that is, they provide the driver with position information based on GPS data.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an empirical map of wireless coverage which quantifies the quality of wireless coverage over an area.
It is another object of the invention to provide such an empirical map which resolves variations of coverage quality over the area to within the geographic accuracy of available Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) system. Such accuracy is 100 meters or better today for low cost civilian equipment and will be improved to 10 meters or better in the next decade by the launching of a new satellite system.
According to the invention, there is provided a system for the production of an empirical map of wireless communication coverage through a process of combining information from individual clients to produce the map which is then shared by all of the clients. White spaces, areas not measured, can be discovered and then explored and added to the map database in a self-teaching process.
The invention provides a method to improve wireless communications by using a digital representation of the coverage map to aid in maintaining a reliable communications link. The invention also includes the adaptation of existing wireless coverage maps of wireless communication providers into the digital domain. The existing maps may then be used as the initial map upon which the empirical map it generated to improve wireless communications for mobile clients.
The empirical map may be generated by combining information from a group of mobile wireless users. The group may consist of a fleet of trucks, taxicabs, government service vehicles, or the customers of a wireless service provider. The mobile vehicles must be equipped with a GPS device or be located by other means such as triangulation. While vehicles are moving, the quality of wireless communication, e.g., signal strength or communication continuity are recorded for each vehicle as a function of positions. The data from all of the vehicles is combined to produce the empirical map. The empirical map may be maintained at a central site and replicated for individual vehicles. The map may then be used to direct mobile users to sites of superior communications reliability, warn mobile users when they are out of the service area or are about to leave the service area, or to regulate data communications automatically to stop and restart communications as a mobile vehicle passes through a gap in coverage. For instance, the data to be sent from a car about to enter a tunnel is stored in a buffer until the car leaves the tunnel.
The foregoing and other objects, aspects and advantages will be better understood from the following detailed description of a preferred embodiment of the invention with reference to the drawings, in which:
Referring now to the drawings, and more particularly to
The system control unit 101 has connected to it and communicates with a GPS receiver 113, a measurement device 114, a wireless communication device 115, and the storage device 116. The GPS receiver 113 provides location information to the system control unit which determines from the GPS data the current location of the vehicle. While a GPS receiver is the preferred location determining device, it will be understood that other location systems based on triangulation algorithms, such as long-distance radio navigation system (LORAN), may also be used.
The measurement device 114 measures the field strength of wireless signals. These measurements are correlated with the location information from the GPS receiver or other location determining device and used to update the local wireless coverage map. This updating function is what makes the map an empirical map.
The wireless communication device 115 is required for transmitting and receiving data from a central server for the purpose of updating the wireless coverage map, as will be described in more detail with reference to FIG. 3. The wireless communication device 115 may be, for example, a digital cellular telephone which may be used for voice communications as well as data communications.
The storage device 116 may be a hard disk drive on which a navigation or street map and the wireless coverage map are stored. The navigation map and the wireless coverage map may be used to generate a route map for the vehicle, and this route map may also be stored on the storage device. The wireless coverage map is typically a digitized version of the wireless coverage map derived from the wireless service provider. As will be described in more detail, this map is used to initialize the system and, as the vehicle is in route, is updated based on measurements made by the measurement device 114. Moreover, there may be multiple wireless coverage maps stored on the storage device 116, one for each wireless service provider which may be used. In addition, the storage device 116 may also include a compact disk (CD) or digital versatile disk (DVD) drive which stores a comprehensive navigation or street map of the coverage area in which the vehicle is located. The CD or DVD may also store the digitized versions of the multiple wireless coverage maps provided by the wireless service providers.
The system control unit 101 further comprises four software processes, the code for which may reside on the storage device 116 and then read into the RAM of the system control unit. These software processes are a navigation manager 102, a coverage manager 103, a connection manager 104, and a user interface manager 105, which are described in more detail with reference to FIG. 2.
The navigation manager 102 has access to the navigation or street map and the coverage map stored in the storage device 116 for route planning or tracking and obtains the vehicle's location information from the GPS receiver 113 for vehicle location and navigation. When the user 220 requests a computed best route, it is the navigation manager 102 that makes this computation.
The coverage manager 103 has access to the measurement device 114 for the current quality of wireless coverage. The coverage manager 103 also has access to the storage device 116, which contains the street map, the coverage map, and route planning information, and interacts with the GPS receiver 113 for predicting the future wireless coverage quality according to the route plan stored in the storage device 116. Based on the prediction of the wireless coverage, the coverage manager 103 notifies the user interface manager 105 the events of interest to the user 220, e.g., soon to lose coverage and soon to regain coverage. The coverage manager 103 refines the coverage map by the new measurement from the measurement device 114 and the location information obtained from the GPS receiver 113.
The connection manager 104 obtains the predictive coverage information (e.g., estimated time until losing coverage or regaining coverage) from the coverage manager 103 and finds the best timing to make a wireless connection through the wireless communication device 115 to the person or destination with which the user 220 wants to communicate. The information about with whom the user wants to communicate is provided by the user interface manager 105 which receives this information from the I/O system 110 as input by the user 220. This information may be input by the user at anytime, either before departing as checkpoints or while in transit.
Once a connection in made, the connection manager enters a monitoring loop in which the commands for disconnection are detected in decision step 507 or a dropped connection is detected in decision step 508. If a disconnect command is detected, the connection manager issues a command in step 509 to the communication device to disconnect. The process then loops back to decision step 501 to await a new connect command from the user interface manager 105. If a dropped connection is detected, a connection error is reported to the user interface manager 105, and the process then loops back to decision step 501 to await a new connect command from the user interface manager 105.
In
While the invention has been described in terms of a single preferred embodiment, those skilled in the art will recognize that the invention can be practiced with modification within the spirit and scope of the appended claims.
This application is a divisional of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/172,611, filed on Oct. 15, 1998, the contents of which is incorporated by reference herein.
Number | Name | Date | Kind |
---|---|---|---|
5481588 | Rickli et al. | Jan 1996 | A |
5758264 | Bonta et al. | May 1998 | A |
5760742 | Branch et al. | Jun 1998 | A |
6014565 | Bonta | Jan 2000 | A |
6150961 | Alewine et al. | Nov 2000 | A |
6188890 | Chang | Feb 2001 | B1 |
6400690 | Liu et al. | Jun 2002 | B1 |
Number | Date | Country | |
---|---|---|---|
20020029108 A1 | Mar 2002 | US |
Number | Date | Country | |
---|---|---|---|
Parent | 09172611 | Oct 1998 | US |
Child | 09925600 | US |