Patent Application
20100268462
1. Field
The presently claimed invention relates generally to the field of wireless communications, and more specifically to the field of navigation using terrestrial wireless signals receivable at a mobile terminal.
2. Background
Recent trends in lifestyles relating to work and communications as well as the ever increasing size of metropolitan areas have yielded a very large increase in the number of commuters traveling by rail, bus, carpool and other forms of single and/or mass transportation. Some travelers or commuters may use personal navigation devices for wayfinding and/or navigation. A typical personal navigation device determines its position by triangulating one or more signals from positioning satellites having fixed orbits. Example satellite positioning systems include the GPS constellation, the Galileo constellation and the GLONASS constellation.
While satellite based navigation systems can be highly accurate, they also have their drawbacks that make their performance unavailable to most users. First, handheld positioning systems are typically much more expensive than other handheld devices, such as mobile telephones. Also, given the complexity of the satellite positioning software and firmware, handheld positioning systems are not easily packaged, meaning that each device is bulky and fairly limited in its functionality other than positioning. Lastly, as noted above handheld positioning systems rely on precise receipt and measurement of positioning signals from one or more orbital satellites. As such, weather conditions and line-of-sight issues may hamper the performance of the typical handheld positioning device because it does not receive the proper signals from the satellite(s). By way of comparison, a good portion of the world's population has adopted the mobile telephone as a preferred way of communication. However, most mobile telephones do not have satellite positioning capability due to the aforementioned limitations. Nevertheless, there exists a need in the art for a system, method and/or apparatus that combines the functionality of a handheld positioning device and a mobile telephone while keeping the cost and complexity thereof relatively low.
Accordingly, the present disclosure includes a detailed description of multiple example aspects, features and advantages of the presently claimed invention. In one aspect, the presently claimed invention includes a method for alerting a user to the user's presence in a selected location, for example, a commuter train station. As described below, the example method can include the step of receiving, at a mobile terminal, a selection of a predetermined location. The example method can also include the step of receiving, at the mobile terminal, a signal from a base station having a unique location identifier, which functions to uniquely associate a geographical location with the base station, which in turn uniquely identifies the predetermined location with a specified signal. Another step can include alerting a user as to a second, subsequent receipt or re-receipt of the signal from the base station having the unique location identifier. That is, the user's mobile terminal will alert him or her if and when he or she is at or near the predetermined location in response to the unique location identifier from the associated base station. In doing so, the mobile terminal functions in part as a personal navigation device by prompting a user as to his or her location.
Another aspect of the presently claimed invention includes a method of user navigation using a mobile terminal. The example method includes the step of initiating, at a mobile terminal, a navigation request including a first predetermined location and a second predetermined location. As described in detail below, the mobile terminal can be configured for storing previously predetermined locations and associating those locations with the uniquely identified base station. As such, the mobile terminal can have a history of locations from which a user may choose an origination and a destination. The example method can further include the steps of receiving, at the mobile terminal, a first signal from a first base station having a first unique location identifier associated with the first predetermined location; and receiving, at the mobile terminal, a second signal from a second base station having a second unique location identifier associated with the second predetermined location. The example method can further include the step of alerting a user as to the presence of the mobile terminal in one of the first or second predetermined locations in response to receipt, at the mobile terminal, of one of the first or second unique location identifiers.
In addition to the example methods described herein, the present application discloses apparatuses, systems and computer-readable media adapted to perform these and other methodologies for assisting a user in location determination and navigation. It will be apparent to those of skill in the art that the example methodologies, systems and apparatuses disclosed herein are readily scalable for use in a multitude of applications, including at least wayfinding, commuting, traveling and navigation. Unlike the satellite based positioning devices, the teachings of the present application are applicable to the more cost effective and functional mobile terminals such as mobile telephones. Other features and advantages are described in detail below with reference to the following figures.
The presently claimed invention is described herein with reference to selected preferred features and aspects thereof with reference to the appended figures. It should be understood by those of skill in the art of communications that the foregoing descriptions are exemplary in nature only, and that the scope of the presently claimed invention is defined by the following claims.
The operating environment 100 can also include one or more communications and/or positioning satellites (not shown), as well as a public switched telephone network (PSTN) (not shown). In a typical wireless communications system, the base stations 102, 104, 106, 108, 110, and 112 function to receive communications from mobile terminals 10 on a forward link and transmit communications to mobile terminals 10 on a reverse link. Each base station 102, 104, 106, 108, 110, and 112 typically operates within a cell, or portion of the wireless network, and communications are maintained as a mobile terminal 10 moves from cell to cell through a hand-off between base stations 102, 104, 106, 108, 110, and 112. Each base station 102, 104, 106, 108, 110, and 112 is uniquely identifiable, and thus the general pathway of a mobile terminal 10 can be derived from observing a sequence of hand-offs between base stations 102, 104, 106, 108, 110, and 112. As used herein, the term base station refers to a terrestrial wireless communications gateway through which wireless communications are routed between mobile terminals. Although a typical base station may be adapted for satellite and terrestrial wireless communications, each base station can be uniquely identified by a terrestrial signal transmitted to one or more mobile terminals.
As shown in
Techniques described herein may be used for various wireless communication networks such as a wireless wide area network (WWAN), a wireless local area network (WLAN), a wireless personal area network (WPAN), and so on. The term “network” and “system” are often used interchangeably. A WWAN may be a Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) network, a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) network, a Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) network, an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) network, a Single-Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access (SC-FDMA) network, a Long Term Evolution (LTE) network, and so on. A CDMA network may implement one or more radio access technologies (RATs) such as CDMA2000, Wideband-CDMA (W-CDMA), and so on. CDMA2000 includes IS-95, IS-2000, and IS-856 standards. A TDMA network may implement Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), Digital Advanced Mobile Phone System (D-AMPS), or some other RAT. GSM and W-CDMA are described in documents from a consortium named “3rd Generation Partnership Project” (3GPP). CDMA2000 is described in documents from a consortium named “3rd Generation Partnership Project 2” (3GPP2). 3GPP and 3GPP2 documents are publicly available. A WLAN may be an IEEE 802.11x network, and a WPAN may be a Bluetooth network, an IEEE 802.15x, or some other type of network. The techniques may also be used for any combination of WWAN, WLAN and/or WPAN.
One aspect of the presently claimed invention includes a method for alerting a user to the user's presence in a selected location, for example a commuter train station. As shown in
In one variation of the example method shown in
In another alternative aspect of the example method, the selection of the predetermined location can be established in accordance with a predetermined route or pathway selected by the user, wherein the predetermined location is geographically or otherwise associated with the selected route, which can include for example waypoints in addition to an origin and a destination, such as train transfer stations, bus stops, driving intersections and the like.
In another variation of the example method, the step of alerting the user can include various alarm means and mechanisms. For example, the example method can alert the user by causing the mobile terminal to perform an auditory alarm through a speaker or headphone, causing the mobile terminal to perform a visual alarm through a blinking light, flashing screen or other visible indicator, or causing the mobile terminal to perform a tactile alarm such as vibrating. To that end, the mobile terminal 10 can be configured for one or more of the preceding functions, having one or more of a speaker, headphone jack, LED or other flashable light, display or screen and a vibration or silent alarm mechanism.
As shown in
The example mobile terminal 10 can further include an alert system (not shown) connected to the processing unit. The alert system can function to alert a user as to his or her presence at or near a predetermined location through a vibration alarm, an audio alarm or a visual alarm. As shown in
Additional functionality of the example mobile terminal 10 is shown in
Another example option is a select initial location function 34 and a select final location function 36, which permit the user to create alerts based upon his or her past, current or future location(s). Additional options include a menu function 38, an options function 40 for adjusting the functionality of the mobile terminal 10, i.e., the type of alert system used by the mobile terminal 10 and an exit function 42 to return to another functionality of the mobile terminal 10. The mobile terminal 10 can also include software, hardware and firmware for generating a visual map of a user's vicinity based upon the known location of the mobile terminal 10 derived from the uniquely identified base stations.
In that regard, another aspect of the presently claimed invention includes a method of user navigation using a mobile terminal. As shown in
Referring again to
As noted above, the third predetermined location can be any number of waypoints, intersections, junctions, intermediate points of interest, stops and so forth along a route between the first and second predetermined locations. The example method permits a user to successfully navigate a complicated route by bus, rail, car, by foot or other means by alerting the user to his or her presence at or near a predetermined waypoint along the route. It should be apparent to those of skill in the art that the methodologies described herein are not only suited for first, second and third predetermined locations, but for any number of geographical areas capable of being uniquely identified by a base station signal. As those of skill in the art will appreciate, the density of base stations in a region is roughly proportional to the population density of that region, and thus in densely populated areas the principles described herein will provide positioning and navigation performance comparable to that found in the more expensive and complex satellite-based positioning systems.
The methodologies described herein may be implemented by various means depending upon the application. For example, these methodologies may be implemented in hardware, firmware, software, or a combination thereof. For a hardware implementation, the processing units may be implemented within one or more application specific integrated circuits (ASICs), digital signal processors (DSPs), digital signal processing devices (DSPDs), programmable logic devices (PLDs), field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), processors, controllers, micro-controllers, microprocessors, electronic devices, other electronic units designed to perform the functions described herein, or a combination thereof.
For a firmware and/or software implementation, the methodologies may be implemented with modules (e.g., procedures, functions, and so on) that perform the functions described herein. Any machine-readable medium tangibly embodying instructions may be used in implementing the methodologies described herein. For example, software codes may be stored in a memory, for example the memory of a mobile terminal 10, and executed by a processing unit, as described above with reference to the mobile terminal 10. Memory may be implemented within the processing unit or external to the processing unit. As used herein the term “memory” refers to any type of long term, short term, volatile, nonvolatile, or other memory and is not to be limited to any particular type of memory or number of memories, or type of media upon which memory is stored. Unless specifically stated otherwise, as apparent from the preceding discussion, it is appreciated that throughout this specification methodologies relating to flow diagrams or otherwise, may also be executed and/or controlled, in whole or in part, by a computing platform including for example the mobile terminal and/or base station(s) described in detail above.
If implemented in firmware and/or software, the functions may be stored as one or more instructions or code on a computer-readable medium. Examples include computer-readable media encoded with a data structure and computer-readable media encoded with a computer program. Computer-readable media includes physical computer storage media. A storage medium may be any available medium that can be accessed by a computer. By way of example, and not limitation, such computer-readable media can comprise RAM, ROM, EEPROM, CD-ROM or other optical disk storage, magnetic disk storage or other magnetic storage devices, or any other medium that can be used to store desired program code in the form of instructions or data structures and that can be accessed by a computer; disk and disc, as used herein, includes compact disc (CD), laser disc, optical disc, digital versatile disc (DVD), floppy disk and Blu-ray disc where disks usually reproduce data magnetically, while discs reproduce data optically with lasers. Combinations of the above should also be included within the scope of computer-readable media.
In addition to storage on computer readable medium, instructions and/or data may be provided as signals on transmission media included in a communication apparatus. For example, a communication apparatus may include a transceiver having signals indicative of instructions and data. The instructions and data are configured to cause one or more processing units to implement the functions outlined in the claims. That is, the communication apparatus includes transmission media with signals indicative of information to perform disclosed functions. At a first time, the transmission media included in the communication apparatus may include a first portion of the information to perform the disclosed functions, while at a second time the transmission media included in the communication apparatus may include a second portion of the information to perform the disclosed functions.
The preceding descriptions are related to selected aspects and preferred examples of the systems and methods of the presently claimed invention. It should be understood by those of skill in the art that these descriptions are exemplary in nature, and that the full scope and import of the presently claimed invention is defined with reference to the following claims.
