Patent Application
20070261081
The present invention will now be described in more detail in relation to the enclosed drawings, in which:
Embodiments consistent with principles of the invention distribute digital video data, which is one example of first media data, from a first portable electronic communication device, such as a mobile phone having on-going access to such data, to a second portable electronic communication device that does not have on-going access to the data. The first media data may be received in the form of DVB-H bursts using DVB-H technology, after which the data is extracted from at least one burst and sent to the second portable electronic communication device, such as for instance a mobile phone, using a second communication technology such as Bluetooth technology.
According to this embodiment of the invention, the portable communication device 100 comprises a first receiving unit 104, a second receiving unit 102, a memory unit 106, a data extracting unit 108, a transmitting unit 110 and a control unit 112. As shown in
The flow-chart of
When a user of the second mobile phone changes channels (e.g., from channel B to channel A), channel A data may not be available to the second mobile phone since the receiver of the second mobile phone is switched off between the received channel B bursts. Since channel A bursts are transmitted with a time interval of approximately 3-4 seconds, the waiting time as experienced by the user would be reduced if channel A data could be made available to the second mobile in advance of receiving the channel A burst by the second mobile phone. One way to obtain channel A data is to send a request to another mobile phone currently receiving channel A burst data, to send channel A data to the second mobile phone.
Since any novel channel A data burst can be received by the second mobile phone itself, it is sufficient to provide channel A data corresponding to one DVB-H data burst from the first mobile phone to the second mobile phone, in this embodiment of the invention.
The following embodiment is also applicable to the case in which a user switches on the DVB-H application in order to consume media data. As the application is just switched on, it is very unlikely that data for the selected channel is available immediately, for which reason a request can be sent to another portable electronic communication device to provide the requested media data to the user equipment.
In the following paragraphs, an exemplary method of providing such channel A data by the first mobile phone to the second mobile phone is described.
Processing may begin with a first portable electronic communication device (e.g., a mobile phone) receiving a request from a second portable electronic communication device, such as a mobile phone, using Bluetooth, to send channel A data using Bluetooth to the second mobile (block 202). Bluetooth is solely one example of a communication technology via which media data may be transmitted between portable electronic communication devices.
A variety of other communication technologies may be used, such as other wireless, wired, and/or optical communication technologies. For example, Infra-Red (IR) communication technology, Wireless Local Area Network (W-LAN) technologies or even wired technologies, such as Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), may be used.
The request may be received by second receiving unit 102 under the control of the control unit 112. In this embodiment, the second receiving unit 102 may comprise a Bluetooth receiving unit. Having received the request, it may be determined whether the first mobile phone, as one example of a portable electronic communication device, is receiving channel A data in DVB-H bursts, or not (block 204). This determination may be performed by the control unit 112, in dependence of potential input that may be received by the first receiving unit 104. In this embodiment, the first receiving unit 104 may comprise a DVB-H receiving unit. If the control unit 112 determines that the first mobile phone is receiving channel A data in DVB-H bursts, the received channel A burst data may be buffered in the memory unit 106 (block 206). After having buffered the burst data comprising channel A data in the memory unit 106, channel A data may be extracted from the DVB-H burst data (block 208). The extraction may be performed by the data extracting unit 108 under the control of the control unit 112.
According to one embodiment consistent with principles of the invention, after having determined that the portable electronic communication device is receiving channel A data in DVB-H bursts, or not (block 204), it is determined whether or not there is available a buffered data burst in the memory unit 106. If a burst is already available, the channel A data comprised therein may be sent to the second portable electronic communication device. Therefore, there is no need to await an incoming burst. Since channel A data is being received by the first portable electronic communication device, burst data is typically already available to be consumed.
By extracting the channel A data from the DVB-H burst data, channel A data may be accessed in the form of Internet Protocol (IP) datagrams. These IP datagrams may be sent from the first mobile phone to the second mobile phone (block 210). In one embodiment, the first mobile phone sends the IP datagrams using the Bluetooth protocol. The transmitting unit 110 may transmit the IP datagrams, having access to the extracted channel A data, for instance in the form of IP datagrams, from the extracting unit 108, under control of the control unit 112.
As mentioned above, in this embodiment, the first mobile phone sends channel A data of an amount corresponding to one channel A DVB-H data burst. There is thus no need to send larger amounts of channel A data or data corresponding to a second DVB-H data burst from the first mobile phone to the second mobile phone. As such, second DVB-H data burst information will be available to the second phone at the same time as it is available to the first mobile phone.
The second mobile phone can thus make use of received channel A data and, for instance, present such data during the time that it lasts when being consumed (e.g., until the time at which the second mobile phone itself receives the second or novel DVB-H data burst).
Returning to the method for which the flow-chart is presented in
After having sent channel A data, using, for instance, Bluetooth, from the first mobile phone to the second mobile phone or alternatively after having sent the negative acknowledgement in block 214, the method may end in block 212.
According to another embodiment of the invention, a method may provide DVB-H channel data by a portable electronic communication device being arranged to receive DVB-H data bursts to at least one other portable electronic communication device being unable to receive DVB-H data bursts. By extracting channel data from the DVB-H data bursts and sending the channel data using a technology different from the DVB-H technology, the at least one other portable electronic communication device can receive channel A data without being equipped with a DVB-H receiver.
By referring to
Processing may begin with a first portable electronic communication device (e.g., a mobile phone) receiving a request for first media data from a second portable electronic communication device (e.g., a mobile phone) via a second communication technology (e.g., using Bluetooth) to send channel A data to the second mobile phone (block 302). Other communication technologies may be used as the second communication technology. This request may be received by second receiving unit 102 under the control of the control unit 112, as previously described in connection to
According to one embodiment of the invention, the channel A data may be available in the form of Internet Protocol (IP) datagrams which can be sent, for example, using Bluetooth, from the first mobile phone to the second mobile phone (block 310). The transmitting may be performed by the transmitting unit 110, possibly having access to the IP datagrams from the extracting unit 108, under control of the control unit 112.
As mentioned above, in this exemplary method, the first mobile phone provides channel A data to a second mobile phone which is unable to receive channel A data bursts. For this reason and for the reason that a potential user of the second mobile phone may want to consume presented channel A data longer than the duration of channel A corresponding to one DVB-H data burst, which consumption duration is about 4 seconds, sending one single DVB-H data burst will typically not suffice. There is thus a need to provide an opportunity for the first mobile phone to continue providing channel A data to the second mobile phone after having sent channel A data corresponding to one data burst. Moreover, the method may also provide an opportunity to stop sending channel A data in case channel A data is to be sent for longer durations than the one corresponding to one DVB-H data burst.
The first mobile phone may determine whether or not the first mobile phone is receiving information to stop sending channel A data to the second mobile phone (block 312). In case the first mobile phone is not receiving such information, processing may return to block 304 with the first mobile phone determining whether or not the first mobile phone is receiving channel A in DVB-H data bursts.
In this way, new channel A DVB-H data bursts can be received, and data there from extracted and sent by the first mobile phone to the second mobile phone being unable to receive the DVB-H data bursts.
If the control unit 112 determines that the first mobile phone does receive information to stop sending channel A data using, for example, Bluetooth, the first mobile phone may stop sending channel A data to the second mobile phone (block 314). The first mobile phone may perform this act using the control unit 112 in dependence on potential information received by the second receiving unit 102.
If, however, it is determined that the first mobile phone is not receiving channel A data, the first mobile phone may send a negative acknowledgement to the second mobile phone (block 318). Within this embodiment, the acknowledgement may be sent using the same communication technology as was used when receiving the request in block 302. In this example, Bluetooth technology may be used. Again, this technology is just one example of a variety of other communication technologies that may be used.
After having stopped sending channel A data using Bluetooth from the first mobile phone to the second mobile phone in block 314 or alternatively after having sent the negative acknowledgement in block 318, the method may end (block 316).
According to an alternative embodiment, the first communication technology may comprise Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting-Terrestrial (ISDB-T).
According to yet another embodiment of the invention, the first communication technology may comprise Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB).
In addition,
The computer program product may be provided as a CD-ROM disc according to one embodiment of the invention. However, the computer program product 50 can alternatively be provided as another type of disc such as a DVD disc, a hard disc, or be provided as a memory or other storage capacity, such as a flash-based memory, for example a memory stick or a USB (Universal Serial Bus) memory or even a volatile memory.
The computer may be implemented as a microcontroller, which is well known to a person skilled in the art.
Embodiments of the invention also include a computer program element having program code. When computer program code is loaded in a computer or portable electronic communication device, the computer or portable electronic communication device may receive a request from a second portable communication device to send first media data to the second portable communication device, receive the first media data in the form of bursts using a first communication technology, and send the first media data to at least the second portable communication device using a second communication technology, such that the second portable communication device can receive the first media data using the second communication technology.
This computer program element or parts thereof may be accessible for downloading over the Internet or by using Wireless Application Protocoll (WAP) or by other techniques for downloading. According to an alternative embodiment of the invention, this computer program element may be accessible via the DVB-H network.
Embodiments consistent with principles of the invention significantly reduce the waiting time until requested media data can be presented to a portable electronic communication device without decreasing the bandwidth available for media data.
Embodiments consistent with principles of the invention also provide an opportunity to receive broadcast transmissions by a portable electronic communication device over a non-broadcast communication channel.
It should be emphasized that the term “comprises/comprising” when used in this specification is taken to specify the presence of stated features, integers or steps, but does not preclude the presence or addition of one or more other features or steps.
It is emphasized that this invention can be implemented in many ways, of which the alternative embodiments above only are examples of a few. These different embodiments are hence non-limiting examples.
According to another embodiment of the invention, the portable electronic communication device may include a different set of units for which the functions may be different, for which reason various different connections connecting the units may be envisaged. Units may be combined, divided or separated in a variety of ways.
According to yet another embodiment, buffering the received burst data may be omitted since extracting channel A information may be performed on the received data burst itself.
Moreover, according to still yet another embodiment, extracting media data, by the extracting unit 108 may be omitted since the media data of the burst, may be directly accessible by the transmitting unit 110.
According to still yet another embodiment of the invention, extracting media data from the DVB-H burst may include extracting MPEG-2 data.
While the above description focused on providing media data from a first portable communication device to a second portable communication device, implementations, consistent with principles of the invention are not so limited. For example, in some embodiments of the invention, the first portable communication device may broadcast the media data to a group of second portable communication devices.
While series of acts have been described with respect to
It will be apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art that aspects of the invention, as described above, may be implemented in many different forms of software, firmware, and hardware in the implementations illustrated in the figures. The actual software code or specialized control hardware used to implement aspects consistent with the principles of the invention is not limiting of the invention. Thus, the operation and behavior of the aspects of the invention were described without reference to the specific software code—it being understood that one of ordinary skill in the art would be able to design software and control hardware to implement the aspects based on the description herein.
Further, certain portions of the invention may be implemented as “logic” that performs one or more functions. This logic may include hardware, such as an application specific integrated circuit, a field programmable gate array, a processor, or a microprocessor, software, or a combination of hardware and software.
No element, act, or instruction used in the description of the present application should be construed as critical or essential to the invention unless explicitly described as such. Also, as used herein, the article “a” is intended to include one or more items. Where only one item is intended, the term “one” or similar language is used. Further, the phrase “based on” is intended to mean “based, at least in part, on” unless explicitly stated otherwise.
This application claims priority under 35 U.S.C. § 119 based on U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60/745,318, filed Apr. 21, 2006, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 60745318 | Apr 2006 | US |
