Wireless radio frequency instrumentation and adaptive network management system

• US 10,027,429 B1
• Filed: 05/27/2016
• Issued: 07/17/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 05/29/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: SignalFox, Inc.
• Original Assignee: SignalFox, Inc.
• Inventors: Kiannejad, Shervin
• Primary Examiner(s): WEST, LEWIS G
• Application Number:
  US15/166,751
• Time in Patent Office: 781 Days
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 17/318 Received signal strength
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 24/04 Arrangements for maintaining operational condition
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 24/08 Testing, supervising or monitoring using real traffic

Abstract

Proactive systems for monitoring, diagnosing, and providing a plan of corrective action for Radio Frequency (RF) hardware components as part of a greater system or network in telecommunications. The system can be used for remote sites and in conjunction with current network management tools as the most prolific and fundamental piece of instrumentation in telecommunication networks. The system can be used simply as an RF development instrument for any industry requiring the use of high frequency signals. It consists of four sensor modules that are wirelessly linked to a receiver module which could be miles away. The sensors are: RF power detector, Spectrum Analyzer, Interference Cancelling Synthesizer, dual function RF power detector and spectrum analyzer. The data gathered allows the user to create a profile for specific malfunctions in the RF chain, as well as interference direction, strength and source type leading to remotely deployed solution, and a mobile network.

Claims

1. An RF monitoring and diagnostic system comprising:

a receiver module having a wireless transceiver for transmitting instructions to at least first and second RF sensor modules and for receiving conditioned and sampled signals from at least the first and second RF sensor modules, a processor coupled to the wireless transceiver for processing the conditioned and sampled signals received through the wireless transceiver, external memory coupled to the processor for storage of conditioned and sensed signals before and after processing, and an Ethernet/Phy block coupled to the processor for uploading the processed sampled and conditioned signals onto a network;

the first sensor module having a signal conditioning circuit for conditioning an RF signal, a sampling circuit for sampling the conditioned RF signal, an external memory for storage of the sampled RF signals, a processor for reading out and packetizing the stored sampled RF signals, and a wireless transceiver for receiving instructions from the receiver module and transmitting the stored and sampled RF signals to the receiver module; and

,

the second sensor module having an RF detector for sensing RF power, a sampling circuit to sample the sensed RF power, an external memory element to store the sensed and sampled RF power, a processor for packetize the stored sampled RF power, and a wireless transceiver for receiving instructions from the receiver module and transmitting stored and conditioned RF power samples to the receiver module.

2. The system of claim 1 further comprising a third sensor module, and wherein the first RF sensor module comprises a spectrum analyzer sensor module, the second RF sensor module comprises an RF power detector sensor module, and the third RF sensor module comprises an RF interference and noise filtering sensor module;

and,

the interference and noise filtering module having a wireless transceiver for receiving interference filtering instructions from and sending success and failure responses to the receiver module, an external memory element for storing the received interference instructions, a synthesizer for the synthesis to produce an interference cancelling RF signal, a processor to instruct and manage a reference block and the synthesizer to optimize and actualize the interference cancelling RF signal, and a transmitter for transmitting the interference cancelling RF signal.