Cloud powered system enabling mobile devices to control peripherals without drivers

• US 10,033,785 B2
• Filed: 05/16/2013
• Issued: 07/24/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 05/16/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: North Carolina State University (University of North Carolina System)
• Original Assignee: North Carolina State University (University of North Carolina System)
• Inventors: Lee, Kyunghan, Rhee, Injong
• Primary Examiner(s): Whipple, Brian
• Assistant Examiner(s): Rotolo, Anthony T
• Application Number:
  US14/401,513
• Publication Number:
  US 20150142919A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,895 Days
• Field of Search: None
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1204 resulting in reduced user or operator actions, e.g. presetting, automatic actions, using hardware token storing data
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1228 Printing driverless or using generic drivers
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1236 Connection management
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1288 in client-server-printer device configuration
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/60 Network streaming of media packets
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/04 specially adapted for terminals or networks with limited capabilities; specially adapted for terminal portability
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/12 specially adapted for proprietary or special-purpose networking environments, e.g. medical networks, sensor networks, networks in vehicles or remote metering networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/563 Data redirection of data network streams
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/04 Protocols for data compression, e.g. ROHC

Abstract

Smart devices including smart phones and tablets are getting more powerful and become versatile enough to replace conventional personal computers. Despite the rapid evolution of capabilities of such devices, controlling peripherals such as networked printers is infeasible due to lack of dedicated drivers to communicate with peripherals. To immediately enable smart devices to operate peripherals, a cloud-powered system, CloudBridge, is suggested. A CloudBridge application miming on a smart device works as a TCP bridge relaying packets between two TCP tunnels connected to a networked peripheral on one side and a cloud server on the other side. Through the bridge, issuing operations from a smart device without having drivers becomes possible by asking the cloud server to interpret the operations to a language that the peripheral can understand, CloudBridge further optimizes user experience by using data compression that is adaptively applied by a decision function. The system implemented in Android phones and Linux servers is demonstrated to control networked printers on smart phones and tablets. The decision function is shown to optimize QoE metrics, such as response time and energy consumption though extensive evaluations.

Claims

1. A method for accessing a service from a peripheral device using a mobile device, the method comprising:

discovering, by an application on the first mobile device, a peripheral from which a user of the first mobile device desires to access a service;

transmitting, by the application on the first mobile device, a file generated on the first mobile device to a server;

at the server, converting the file into a content stream compatible with the peripheral, determining, based on available network bandwidth and a size of the content stream, whether or not to compress the content stream, and transmitting the content stream or the compressed content stream to the first mobile device, wherein the server includes a compression decision function that determines whether or not to compress the content stream using an indicator function derived from one of;

whether, given the available network bandwidth and the size of the content stream, a modeled total print time for the content stream without compression of the content stream exceeds a modeled total print time for the content stream with compression of the content stream; and

whether, given the available network bandwidth and the size of the content stream, a modeled energy consumption of the first mobile device without compression of the content stream exceeds a modeled energy consumption of the first mobile device with compression of the content stream;

receiving, by the application on the first mobile device, the content stream or the compressed content stream from the server to be delivered to the peripheral and for which the service is to be invoked;

performing, by the application on the first mobile device, header assembly or decompression of the content stream; and

relaying, by the application on the first mobile device, the content stream to the peripheral or to a second mobile device.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the peripheral comprises a printer and the service comprises a print service.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the peripheral comprises a one of:

a fax machine, a scanner, a wireless mouse, and a camera.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the application connects with the server and the peripheral or the second mobile device via TCP connections.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the peripheral and the first mobile device are located behind a firewall or a network address translator (NAT) and wherein the server communicates with the mobile device through the firewall using a pinhole created by a connection between the mobile device and the server.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein relaying the content stream to the peripheral or to the second mobile device includes relaying the content stream to the second mobile device, and from the second mobile device to the peripheral.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein the first and second mobile devices each comprise a mobile handset.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein receiving a content stream includes receiving a compressed content stream from the server.

9. A system for accessing a service from a peripheral device using a mobile device, the system comprising:

a server including at least one processor and a memory and containing a driver for controlling a peripheral to provide a service; and

an application configured to execute on a first mobile device for discovering the peripheral from which a user of the first mobile device desires to access the service, for transmitting a file generated on the first mobile device to the server, wherein the server converts the file into a content stream compatible with the peripheral, determines, based on available network bandwidth and a size of the content stream, whether or not to compress the content stream, and transmits the content stream or a compressed content stream to the first mobile device, wherein the server includes a compression decision function that determines whether or not to compress the content stream using an indicator function derived from one of;

whether, given the available network bandwidth and the size of the content stream, a modeled total print time for the content stream without compression of the content stream exceeds a modeled total print time for the content stream with compression of the content stream; and

whether, given the available network bandwidth and the size of the content stream, a modeled energy consumption of the first mobile device without compression of the content stream exceeds a modeled energy consumption of the first mobile device with compression of the content stream; and

wherein the application receives the content stream or the compressed content stream from the server to be delivered to the peripheral and for which the service is to be invoked, performs header assembly or decompression of the content stream, and relays the content stream to the peripheral or to a second mobile device.

10. The system of claim 9 wherein the peripheral comprises a printer, the service comprises a print service, and the server comprises a print server including drivers for controlling a plurality of different printers.

11. The system of claim 9 wherein the peripheral comprises one of:

a fax, a scanner, a wireless mouse, and a camera.

12. The system of claim 9 wherein the first mobile device communicates with the server and the peripheral or the second mobile device via TCP connections.

13. The system of claim 9 wherein the peripheral and the first mobile device are located behind a firewall or a network address translator (NAT) and wherein the server communicates with the first mobile device through the firewall using a pinhole created by a connection between the first mobile device and the server.

14. The system of claim 9 wherein the application is configured to relay the content stream to the second mobile device and wherein the second mobile device is configured to relay the content stream to the peripheral.

15. The system of claim 9 wherein the first and second mobile devices each comprise a mobile handset.

16. A non-transitory computer readable medium having stored thereon executable instructions that when executed by the processor or a computer control the computer to perform steps comprising:

discovering, by an application on a first mobile device, a peripheral from which a user of the first mobile device desires to access a service;

transmitting, by the application on the first mobile device, a file generated on the first mobile device to a server;

at the server, converting the file into a content stream compatible with the peripheral, determining, based on available network bandwidth and a size of the content stream, whether or not to compress the content stream, and transmitting the content stream or the compressed content stream to the first mobile device wherein the server includes a compression decision function that determines whether or not to compress the content stream using an indicator function derived from one of;

whether, given the available network bandwidth and the size of the content stream, a modeled total print time for the content stream without compression of the content stream exceeds a modeled total print time for the content stream with compression of the content stream; and

whether, given the available network bandwidth and the size of the content stream, a modeled energy consumption of the first mobile device without compression of the content stream exceeds a modeled energy consumption of the first mobile device with compression of the content stream;

receiving, by the application on the first mobile device, the content stream or the compressed content stream from the server to be delivered to the peripheral and for which the service is to be invoked;

performing, by the application on the first mobile device, header assembly or decompression of the content stream; and

relaying, by the application on the first mobile device, the content stream to the peripheral or to a second mobile device.