Patent Application
20110187599
The invention relates to a technique for providing a wireless communication service and, more particularly, to a technique for communicating location information in a certain format in one such service.
This section introduces aspects that may help facilitate a better understanding of the invention. Accordingly, the statements of this section are to be read in this light and are not to be understood as admissions about what is prior art or what is not prior art.
The marriage of wireless communication services and location based services has been observed. For example, in the United States, the “E911” mandate requires that a wireless service provider automatically obtain information concerning a location of a wireless caller calling for emergency help, i.e., without the caller having to provide the location information, and route the call to the appropriate emergency responder for the caller's location. Such E911 service is important in times of fires, break-ins, kidnapping, and other events where communicating one's location is difficult or impossible. To facilitate the E911 service, more and more mobile devices (e.g., mobile phones) have been “global positioning system (GPS) enabled” by incorporating therein a GPS receiver for receiving signals from GPS satellites to determine the devices' location.
However, a GPS enabled mobile device when used indoors or other non-optimal settings, where the line of sight to the GPS satellites is obstructed or interfered, oftentimes cannot effectively provide GPS information concerning its location. To help a mobile device with effective location acquisition, especially on power up of the mobile device, a well known assisted GPS (A-GPS) service has been deployed by wireless service providers which, for example, may supply through a data channel to the mobile device orbital, clock and other data about the GPS satellites relevant to the mobile device. The wireless service providers have base stations installed therein GPS receivers receiving signals from the GPS satellites. Based on the received satellite signals, the orbital, clock and other data, including GPS information about a base station's own location, can be computed. A base station may pass the computed information to the mobile devices served thereby to realize the A-GPS.
Many location based services involving mobile devices have emerged since the E911 initiative, which include, for instance, a chaperon service whereby a parent may be informed of a location of a child carrying a mobile device, e.g., whether the child has exited or entered a geographic area previously defined by the parent. Recently, the ability of a mobile device to provide GPS location information fueled proliferation of such location based services as targeted advertising, and customized traffic, map, weather and other services based on the current location of the device. Wireless service providers would also benefit from the location information from mobile devices using their services, e.g., to dynamically optimize their network capacity to better serve wireless customers in crowded areas.
As more and more location based services in the wireless communication arena are in the offing, and more and more mobile devices will need to communicate GPS location information to take advantage of these services, a significant strain is anticipated on the capacity of a wireless communication system, especially its radio access portion, resulting from the mobile devices communicating an increasing amount of GPS location information over the air, thereby undesirably degrading the performance of the wireless communication service. In accordance with an embodiment of the invention, a mobile device is capable of receiving via a wireless medium first information, concerning a location of a given position in the wireless communication system. For example, the given position may be the position of a base station serving the mobile device. The mobile device may rely on a location device including, e.g., a GPS device, to provide second information, concerning a location of the mobile device. The mobile device generates data concerning a location of the device relative to the given position based at least on the first and second information.
In one embodiment, the mobile device sends the relative location data to the wireless communication system to realize a location based service, thereby utilizing reduced over-the-air bandwidth relative to sending the otherwise GPS location information as would be the conventional case. Advantageously, such bandwidth saving allows more frequent communications by a mobile device of its relative location data to the wireless communication system to fully benefit from the location based service.
The ability of a mobile device to provide GPS information concerning its location has fueled proliferation of such location based services as targeted advertising, and customized traffic, map, weather and other services based on the current location of the device. Typically, a mobile device provides the GPS location information upon request by a location server in a wireless communications system. Such a location information request is kept infrequent so that the capacity of the system, especially its radio access portion, is not significantly strained from mobile devices' responses to such a request. However, as more and more location based services in the wireless communications arena are in the offing, and more and more mobile devices will need to communicate GPS location information to take advantage of these services, a significant strain on the wireless communication system capacity is anticipated, resulting from mobile devices' communicating an increasing amount of GPS location information over the air, thereby undesirably degrading the performance of the wireless communication service.
In accordance with an embodiment of the invention, to effectively utilize the limited radio-access capacity of a wireless communication system, the location information to be communicated by a mobile device over the air should no longer be in the conventional GPS format. The latter typically includes longitude and latitude measures each expressed in the form of ddd:mm:ss.sss with an East/West or a North/South indicator, where d stands for degrees; m stands for minutes; and s stands for seconds. Rather, in accordance with the embodiment the location information to be communicated should be representative of the location of the mobile device relative to a known reference point or position in the wireless communication system. For example, the reference position may be the location of a base station in the system which serves the mobile device. Such a reference position is convenient particularly if the base station has already incorporated therein a GPS engine including a GPS receiver which is afforded a good line-of-sight of the GPS satellites. The GPS engine is capable of computing the GPS location of the base station and other data, e.g., for A-GPS purposes based on GPS signals received from the satellites. More importantly, the amount of data needed to represent the relative location of a mobile device in this manner is substantially (about 200%) less than that representing latitude and longitude measures as in the conventional GPS format. Advantageously, with the invention, mobile devices may be programmed to communicate automatically (as opposed to being upon request) their relative location information on a regular basis to effectively utilize the location based services, without significantly degrading the performance of the wireless communication service.
Where, for example, the wireless communication service is provisioned by system 100 according to a global system for mobile communications (GSM) standard, RAN subsystem 105 includes wireless facilities and channels for a GSM/EDGE radio access network (GERAN). Controller 113 may then be a so-called “base station controller (BSC)” which, among other things, controls operations of base station 117 in a well known manner to carry out the GSM service. As is well known, base station 117 includes a transmitter (not shown) and a receiver (not shown) for communications with mobile devices served thereby. It establishes physical radio connections with mobile devices, e.g., device 103, accessing the wireless communication service including location based services.
Where, for example, the wireless communication service is provisioned by system 100 according to a universal mobile telecommunication system (UMTS) standard, RAN subsystem 105 includes wireless facilities and channels for a UMTS terrestrial radio access network (UTRAN), controller 113 may then be a so-called “radio network controller (RNC)” which, among others things, controls operations of base station 117 a well known manner to carry out the UMTS service. Base station 117 may also be known as a node B according to the UMTS standard.
It should be noted at this point that the present invention may also be applied to other types of wireless communication service including, but not limited to, a 4th generation (4G) wireless communication service provisioned according to a long term evolution (LTE) standard.
In a well known manner, mobile switching center (MSC) 131 administers the wireless communication service. MSC 131 is capable of, among other things, originating and terminating a circuit switched connection between a mobile communications device (e.g., device 103) and another device via an external network (not shown), e.g., a public switched telephone network (PSTN), internet protocol (IP) network, microwave network, satellite network, cable network, optical fiber network, etc., or a combination thereof. MSC 131 in this instance is connected to location server 140, e.g., via an intranet. Location server 140 is the intended receiver of the location information from a mobile device, and is instrumental to providing, in a well known manner, such location based services the aforementioned E911 service; chaperon service; targeted advertising; customized traffic, map, weather and other services based on the received location information indicating the current location of the mobile device.
In one embodiment, mobile device 103 includes, among other things, GPS engine 151, processor 153, transceiver 157 and memory 159. GPS engine 151 includes a GPS receiver for receiving signals from the GPS satellites. GPS engine 151, perhaps with the help of A-GPS, calculates in a well known manner the GPS coordinates of device 103 in terms of latitude and longitude. The resulting GPS coordinates (LT, LG)device indicating the location (also known as a “geolocation”) of the device is stored in memory 159. As fully disclosed below, processor 153 in this embodiment uses (LT, LG)device to determine the corresponding relative coordinates (α, β) indicating the location of device 103 relative to the location of base station 117 serving device 103. The latter location is determined by GPS engine 161 in base station 117 whose location indicated by GPS coordinates (LT, LG)base is provided to device 103 in a manner described below. Processor 153 converts the relative coordinates (α, β) into a “base station assisted location format” in accordance with an embodiment to be described. Processor 153 causes transceiver 157 to transmit a radio frequency (RF) signal containing data concerning the relative coordinates to RAN subsystem 105 to inform system 100 of the relative location of device 103.
In one embodiment, processor 153 digitizes signed distances α and β to form X-byte and Y-byte, respectively, in accordance with the aforementioned “base station assisted location format.”
Given a distance resolution, say, 10-meter resolution, processor 153 quantizes ∥α∥(∥β∥). To that end, processor 153 in this instance rounds ∥α∥(∥β∥) to the nearest multiple of 10. Specifically, processor 153 in this instance rounds ∥α∥(∥β∥) to the immediately higher multiple of 10 if the unit digit of ∥α∥(∥β∥) is greater than or equal to 5. Otherwise if its unit digit is smaller than 5, ∥α∥(∥β∥) is rounded to the immediately lower multiple of 10. That is, in this instance RND(14)=10 and RND(25)=30, where RND denotes the rounding operation performed by processor 153. Continuing the example, processor 153 maps the rounded ∥α∥(∥β∥) value to a 7-distance-bit representation according to table 400 in
After forming the X-byte and Y-byte representing the location of device 103 relative to base station 117, processor 153 causes transceiver 157 to transmit an RF signal containing those data bytes and information concerning an identification (ID) of device 103 (e.g., mobile identification number (MIN)). After receiving the RF signal through base station 117, controller 113 processes the signal content including the X-byte and Y-byte and the mobile device ID information in a manner described fully below. It suffices to know for now that controller 113 recovers (LT, LG)device based, in part, on the received X- and Y-bytes.
In one embodiment, under the control of controller 113, base station 117 broadcasts information concerning (LT, LG)base obtained from GPS engine 161, as indicated at step 503 in
The foregoing merely illustrates the principles of the invention. It will thus be appreciated that those skilled in the art will be able to devise numerous arrangements which embody the principles of the invention and are thus within its spirit and scope.
For example, in the disclosed embodiment, the location of a base station (e.g., base station 117) is used as a reference point or position to which the relative location of a mobile device served thereby is determined. It will be appreciated that a person skilled in the art may apply the present invention using a different reference point in the wireless communication system 100 to determine the relative location of a mobile device to suit his/her particular needs.
Finally, although wireless communication system 100 is embodied in the form of various discrete functional blocks, these systems could equally well be embodied in an arrangement in which the functions of any one or more of those blocks or indeed, all of the functions thereof, are realized, for example, by one or more appropriately programmed processors or devices.
