Patent Application
20120270505
The invention relates to environmental sensor devices, including headless sensor devices.
There are many instances where it may be desirable to have thousands of measurements of a resource (e.g. a natural resource) in many different physical locations. For example, the ability to measure the cleanliness of air or water would be useful, but the ability to measure the cleanliness of air or water with thousands, or perhaps millions, of data points across a wide geographical region in many aspects would be even more useful and important.
Normally, these types of mass measurements would be difficult and costly. In other words, taking measurements at a fine granularity (i.e., a small physical distance between each measurement) but having the entire scope of the measurements spanning a large distance (i.e., spanning a city, region, country, etc.) might require tens of thousands of sensor devices and a large logistical deployment operation.
Additionally, if the sensors simply stored captured measurements internally, it could very well be impracticable to have thousands of sensors each take data over a period of time and then require people to manually gather the data from each sensor. On the other hand, designing each sensor to be able to wirelessly send back data would increase the cost of the stand-alone sensor device as a whole. For example, when thousands of sensors might be needed to gain an accurate picture of an hour-by-hour change in the air quality at a detailed level across a large city such as Los Angeles or Shanghai, the cost of the sensor array may become prohibitive.
Currently, air and water quality sensor devices generally are bulky and include display panel(s), keys for user input, batteries or AC adapters, storage media to store the measurement data, as well as a processor and memory to process the measurement data taken.
The present invention is illustrated by way of example and is not limited by the drawings, in which like references indicate similar elements, and in which:
Embodiments of a device, system, and method for headless sensor measurement collection are described.
Each headless sensor device may include one or more specific measurement sensors. For example, one sensor may measure particulates in the air, another may measure air temperature, another may measure barometric pressure, yet another may measure wind speed. In other examples, sensors that measure water temperature and qualities may be utilized. Still other examples may include ground and/or water movement sensors, among others. Several of these measurement sensors may be combined within a single headless sensor device in some embodiments. In other embodiments, the headless sensor device simply includes one measurement sensor.
In many embodiments, a headless sensor device includes at least a measurement sensor as well as processing logic to retrieve, store, and/or send measurement data originating from the headless sensor device. This processing logic may contain one or more components. In many embodiments, due to the logistical issues associated with manually retrieving measurement data from each sensor device location, each sensor device may be coupled to a wireless device (102A-102B) or a wired device (102C-102D) where each wireless/wired device may be capable of communicating with a wired (104) or wireless (106) network, respectively. Communicatively coupling each device to a network may allow measurement data from many headless sensor devices to be pooled at a central data pool/repository, also coupled to the respective network, or coupled to a separate network which allows inter-network communications with the network the headless sensor devices are coupled to. In order to enable this communication, each wireless/wired device may include communication logic to transmit communications over the one or more networks.
The headless sensor device and wired/wireless (i.e. mobile) communication device pair may take one of several forms. Some examples in
Each network shown may come in any one of many forms. For example, wireless network 104 may be in the form of a cellular network, a WiMAX network, an IEEE 802.11-based network, a satellite communication-based network, or any one of many other forms of wireless communication networks. Wired network 106 may be an Ethernet-based network, a coaxial cable-based network, a digital subscriber line-based network, a power line network, or any one of many other forms of wired networks.
Coupled to the sensor head 202 may be a processor 204 to perform simple tasks such as retrieving the measurement data from the sensor head 202. If the sensor head 202 outputs analog data, the processor 204 may be required to process the analog data and convert it into digital data. The processor 204 may be coupled to a volatile memory 206 for temporary storage of data structures and instruction code to be operated upon by the processor 204. Due to the limited nature of the operations performed by processor 204, the volatile memory 206 may be relatively small. In some embodiments, the volatile memory may comprise a type of dynamic random access memory. Though in other embodiments, other forms of volatile memory may be utilized.
Furthermore, the processor 204 may also be coupled to non-volatile memory (NVM) storage 208. The NVM 208 includes storage space which may store collected measurement data from the sensor head 202. The NVM storage 208 may also store a sensor data access protocol (SDAP) manageability code 210A. The SDAP manageability code 210A may comprise firmware and include instructions for the headless sensor device to communicate with one or more mobile devices, such as mobile communication device 212 (e.g., a wireless or wired device from
Additionally, I/O and communication logic 214, coupled to the NVM storage 208 and the processor 204 in many embodiments, provides hardware circuitry to enable a communication link 216 between the headless sensor device 200 and one or more mobile devices, such as mobile communication device 212.
In some embodiments, communication link 216 may be a wireless link, such as a Bluetooth® link, an IEEE 802.11-based link, a cellular telephone link, or any other type of wireless link capable of allowing wireless electronic data transfer between the headless sensor device 200 and mobile communication device 212. In other embodiments, communication link 216 may be a wired link, such as a Universal Serial Bus (USB) link, an Ethernet link, or any other form of wired communication link that allows for electronic data transfer between the two devices.
The mobile communication device 212 includes SDAP 210B manageability code. SDAP 210B manageability code includes instructions that allow the mobile communication device 212 to communicate with the headless sensor device 200. In some embodiments, SDAP 210B manageability code may comprise driver software for the headless sensor device, which creates a logical communication path to the headless sensor device 200. The SDAP 210B manageability code provides a discovery protocol that allows an interface into the headless sensor device 200 functionality. Examples of functions the headless sensor device 200 is capable of may include some or all of the functions listed in Table 1.
It is important to note that other functions not shown in Table 1 may additionally be available in other embodiments. Once the mobile communication device 212 establishes a communication link with the headless sensor device 200, where the SDAP 210A and 210B manageability code is cross-compatible, this functional interface may be established to allow logic on the mobile device to call any or all of these functions (and potentially more that are not listed).
Additionally, in many embodiments, two or more of these functions can be called through a single subroutine instruction sent to the headless sensor device 200. For example, in many embodiments, a sensor discovery phase may include the mobile communication device 212 sending a discovery instruction to the headless sensor device 200 and, as a result, the headless sensor device 200 may return the results of the sensor type detection, sensor payload details, sensor protocol version, and data transfer type functions all at once to complete a predetermined group of functions for a discovery phase. This may allow minimization of packets sent from the mobile communication device 212 to the headless sensor device 200.
In many embodiments, the headless sensor device includes voltage regulation logic 218. Voltage regulation logic 218 couples the headless sensor device to a power source 220 and regulates the power being delivered to the headless sensor device 200. In different embodiments, the power source 220 may be an alternating current (e.g., being plugged into a standard electrical grid) or a direct current (e.g., being coupled to a battery).
Additionally, in many embodiments, power management logic (PML) 222 commands the voltage regulation logic 220 to supply a given amount of power to the headless sensor device 200. This amount of power may be modified over time to make available two or more different power states for alternate modes of operation of the headless sensor device 200. For example, when the headless sensor device 200 is gathering measurement data and/or communicating with the mobile communication device 212, it may be in a full power, fully operational state, whereas, when the headless sensor device 200 is not gathering data or communicating with the mobile communication device 212, it may be in a low power state, semi-functional state.
A low power state may limit the functionality of the device to scanning for a wake event. There may be a list of wake events that can activate the headless sensor device by causing the PML 222 to command the voltage regulation logic to fully power up the device. A wake event may include an open connection command function (from Table 1) received from the mobile communication device 212. Another potential wake event may be self-contained within the headless sensor device 200. For example, the headless sensor device may include a timer device 224, which remains functional in low power states, that is capable of providing a timer expire event to cause the PML 222 to power the rest of the headless sensor device 200. Setting the timer controls, including whether to utilize timer functionality and the length of time the timer 224 is initially set at, may be implemented during a headless sensor device 200 initialization phase.
In some embodiments, many of the components in the headless sensor device 200 are integrated into a system on a chip (SOC) device 226.
The mobile communication device 212 (e.g., a smartphone) may also include components to allow the device to operate and communicate with the headless sensor device 200. For example, in the embodiment shown in
In many embodiments, the NVM 234 also may store a headless sensor device (HSD) table 236 that includes information gathered about the list of known headless sensor devices, one of which may be headless sensor device 200. The HSD table 236 may create a unique identifier per headless sensor device and an address to allow for further communication with a given headless sensor device when needed.
In cases where the communication link 216 is wireless, the communication link 216 infrastructure and protocol utilized may or may not have a large range to effectively communicate with the mobile communication from any distance. In embodiments where the wireless link infrastructure and protocol do allow for distant links (e.g, a cellular network), the HSD table 236 may include the cellular telephone number each known headless sensor device. In other embodiments where the wireless link infrastructure and protocol do not allow for distant links (e.g., a Bluetooth® network), the mobile communication device 212 and each of the headless sensor devices, such as device 200, may effectively ping for a mutual discovery between two in-range devices. In some embodiments, the headless sensor devices will emanate a ping to signify they are available in the area, in other embodiments, the mobile communication device will emanate the ping. In each of these embodiments, the device not emanating the ping would be searching for any in-range devices pinging the network.
In other embodiments, the communication link 216 is a wired connection. In these embodiments, each headless sensor device in the grid of devices may be coupled to a network that allows for IP addresses to be allocated to each headless sensor device. The list of IP addresses may be stored in the HSD table 236 on the mobile device 212. In yet other embodiments, the communication link may be an external Universal Serial Bus (USB) cable or another short range cable (proprietary or standard), which allows a direct same location coupling to be made manually between the mobile device 212 and a given headless sensor device.
In yet other embodiments that are not shown in
The process in
Turning to
In many embodiments, once the connection between the two devices is opened, communication between the two devices may take the form of function calls (essentially instructions) sent from the mobile communication device to the headless sensor device to instruct the headless sensor device to do one or more of many possible functions the headless sensor device is capable of performing. The headless sensor device, as a result of receiving one or more of these function calls from the mobile communication device, may initialize/calibrate itself, take a measurement from the sensor head, report status back to the mobile communication device, send a payload of measurement data to the mobile communication device, or any one or more other functions it is capable of performing.
Returning to
Once the mobile communication device receives this information, processing logic within the mobile communication device then enters the sensor initialization phase (processing block 320). Whether a single initialization instruction or multiple instructions are sent to the headless sensor device, processing logic will then read any preset/configuration information (processing block 322) for the headless sensor device to configure itself with the requirements for sensor data collection.
Processing logic will then determine what mode of operation the headless sensor device is utilizing (i.e., whether the headless sensor device is in a calibration routine or whether it's actually collecting measurement data to send to the mobile communication device) (processing block 324). Next, processing logic determines whether the data collection is going to utilize multiple iterations or a single iteration of measurement and how long the data is to be gathered (i.e., what total amount of time) (processing block 326). Finally, processing logic determines whether the headless sensor device will be accumulating data using local storage within the headless sensor device or whether the headless sensor device is to immediately packetize any measurement data that is retrieved from the sensor head and sent to the mobile communication device without using its local non-volatile storage to store the collected measurement data for any period of time (processing block 328). At this point the sensor initialization phase is complete. This detection generally takes the form of processing logic within the mobile communication device sending an instruction to the headless sensor device inquiring about the sensor type. The headless sensor device can then return its type in a packet of information to the mobile communication device.
Once the sensor initialization phase has been completed, processing logic then enters the payload transfer phase (processing block 330). In the payload transfer phase processing logic in the mobile communication device then determines the length of the transferred data, to determine what portion of the data received is the end (processing block 332). The mobile communication device (MCD) then receives the measurement data payload sent from processing logic in the headless sensor device (processing block 334). In many embodiments, an error check mechanism may be implemented to determine if the amount of data received matches the length of transfer information that was previously sent. Other forms of error checking and correction may also be present to mitigate the loss of any potential data sent between the devices. Finally, processing logic in the mobile communication device then signals a completion of the transfer, as determined by the specific implementation defined in the initialization phase (processing block 336). The process then finishes when the connection between the two devices is closed (processing block 340).
Elements of embodiments of the present invention may also be provided as a non-transient machine-readable medium for storing the machine-executable instructions. The machine-readable medium may include, but is not limited to, flash memory, optical disks, compact disks-read only memory (CD-ROM), digital versatile/video disks (DVD) ROM, random access memory (RAM), erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM), electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM), magnetic or optical cards, propagation media or other type of non-transient machine-readable media suitable for storing electronic instructions.
In the description above and in the claims, the terms “include” and “comprise,” along with their derivatives, may be used, and are intended to be treated as synonyms for each other. In addition, in the following description and claims, the terms “coupled” and “connected,” along with their derivatives may be used. It should be understood that these terms are not intended as synonyms for each other. Rather, in particular embodiments, “connected” may be used to indicate that two or more elements are in direct physical or electrical contact with each other. “Coupled” may mean that two or more elements are in direct physical or electrical contact. However, “coupled” may also mean that two or more elements are not in direct contact with each other, but yet still cooperate, interact, or communicate with each other.
In the description above, certain terminology is used to describe embodiments of the invention. For example, the term “logic” is representative of hardware, firmware, software (or any combination thereof) to perform one or more functions. For instance, examples of “hardware” include, but are not limited to, an integrated circuit, a finite state machine, or even combinatorial logic. The integrated circuit may take the form of a processor such as a microprocessor, an application specific integrated circuit, a digital signal processor, a micro-controller, or the like.
It should be appreciated that reference throughout this specification to “one embodiment” or “an embodiment” means that a particular feature, structure or characteristic described in connection with the embodiment is included in at least one embodiment of the present invention. Therefore, it is emphasized and should be appreciated that two or more references to “an embodiment” or “one embodiment” or “an alternative embodiment” in various portions of this specification are not necessarily all referring to the same embodiment. Furthermore, the particular features, structures or characteristics may be combined as suitable in one or more embodiments of the invention.
Similarly, it should be appreciated that in the foregoing description of embodiments of the invention, various features are sometimes grouped together in a single embodiment, figure, or description thereof for the purpose of streamlining the disclosure aiding in the understanding of one or more of the various inventive aspects. This method of disclosure, however, is not to be interpreted as reflecting an intention that the claimed subject matter requires more features than are expressly recited in each claim. Rather, as the following claims reflect, inventive aspects lie in less than all features of a single foregoing disclosed embodiment. Thus, the claims following the detailed description are hereby expressly incorporated into this detailed description.
