Patent Application
20070284446
The accompanying drawing is included to provide a further understanding of the invention, and is incorporated in and constitutes a part of this specification. The drawing illustrates embodiment of the invention and, together with the description, serves to explain the principles of the invention.
For the convenience of description, a wireless communication apparatus (such as a mobile phone) is described as an embodiment of the present invention in the following. However the embodiments described below should not be construed as restrictions of the present invention. It should be understood by those skilled in the art that the spirit and scope of the present invention and the teaching of the embodiments described below may be applied to any portable electronic apparatus.
The controlling unit 110 is further coupled to the wireless identification unit 130. The wireless identification unit 130 detects at least one external tag in a wireless manner. In the present embodiment, the wireless identification unit 130 detects external tag(s) using, for example, the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) mechanism. When the wireless identification unit 130 cannot detect the tag whose characteristics is recorded in the database, the controlling unit 110 controls the mobile phone 100 to give a warning. In
Alternatively, after the wireless identification unit 130 detects all external tags continuously (or discontinuously) in a wireless manner (such as RFID), the characteristics of each detectable tag are transmitted to the controlling unit 110. After that, the controlling unit 110 searches in the database 140 to determine whether a tag is a target tag. When any target tag recorded in the database 140 cannot be detected by the wireless identification unit 130, the controlling unit 110 controls the speaker to give a corresponding warning according to the undetected target tag.
In the present embodiment, the induction manner between the wireless identification unit 130 and the tag may be inductive coupling, backscatter coupling, or other induction manners. In addition, a tag may be provided with required power by wireless transmission power from the wireless identification unit 130, thus the volume of the tag may be reduced since it does not need additional power. Certainly, those skilled in the art may apply power (such as solar power) to the tag according to the requirement.
The working frequencies of the RFID range from low frequency to high frequency (e.g. 134.2 KHz, 13.56 MHz, UHF band of 300 MHz˜1 GHz, and SHF band of 2.4 GHz), and the inductive distances are also different. For example, the inductive distances for the RFID at working frequencies of 134.2 KHz and 13.56 MHz are from about 5 cm to 70 cm, and it can be up to 5 meters at frequency of UHF. Thus the appropriate detecting frequency can be chosen according to the requirement.
The aforesaid tag (such as the tag TAG_A) can be carried by the user 200, and the other tag (such as the tag TAG_B) can be disposed on the object 300. When the mobile phone 100 is away from the user 200 (i.e. from the tag TAG_A) farther than the inductive distance such that the wireless identification unit 130 cannot detect the tag TAG_A, the controlling unit 110 gives a warning with the speaker promptly to remind the user to prevent from losing the mobile phone 100. Here the object 300 may be, for example, valuables of the user. When the object 300 disposed with a tag TAG_B is away from the user 200 (i.e. from the mobile phone 100) farther than the inductive distance, such that the wireless identification unit 130 cannot detect the tag, the controlling unit 110 immediately gives a warning through the speaker 150 to remind the user to check whether the object 300 is stolen or lost.
Furthermore, when any target tag recorded in the database 140 cannot be detected by the wireless identification unit 130, the controlling unit 110 controls the mobile phone 100 to prohibit any access. Thus the security of personal data and privacy can be ensured.
Although only two tags is illustrated in
Furthermore, in the present embodiment, different warning sounds and volumes can be configured in accordance with different objects (i.e. different tags) respectively. Thus, the user can be instantly notified of the object by the warning sound without checking which object is possibly beyond reach.
In summary, by detecting an external tag by a wireless identification unit disposed in the portable electronic apparatus, the present invention can remind the user to prevent from losing the portable electronic apparatus and ensure security of personal data and privacy of the user. Further, the portable electronic apparatus can provide the function for preventing the valuables from being lost or stolen by disposing the tag(s) on the valuables.
While the present invention has been particularly shown and described with reference to exemplary embodiments thereof, it will be understood by those of ordinary skill in the art that various changes in form and details may be made therein without departing from the spirit and scope of the present invention as defined by the following claims.
