In-vehicle auxiliary memory storage

• US 10,140,116 B2
• Filed: 09/26/2016
• Issued: 11/27/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 09/26/2016
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Ford Global Technologies, LLC (Ford Motor Company)
• Original Assignee: Ford Global Technologies, LLC (Ford Motor Company)
• Inventors: Caushi, Brunilda Bleta
• Primary Examiner(s): Kang, Insun
• Application Number:
  US15/275,577
• Publication Number:
  US 20180088931A1
• Time in Patent Office: 792 Days
• Field of Search: None
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/1847 specifically adapted to static storage, e.g. adapted to flash memory or SSD
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/654 using techniques specially adapted for alterable solid state memories, e.g. for EEPROM or flash memories
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1097 for distributed storage of data in networks, e.g. transport arrangements for network file system [NFS], storage area networks [SAN] or network attached storage [NAS]
• 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 67/34 involving the movement of software or configuration parameters network booting or remote initial program loading [RIPL] G06F9/4416

Abstract

An embedded modem communicates over a vehicle bus with controllers that each include data storage. The embedded modem queries the controllers over the bus to identify controllers having available storage, such that if the available storage is located on a priority controller, the embedded modem sends received data over the bus to the priority controller. Otherwise, if the available storage is available on a non-priority controller, the embedded modem send the data over the bus to the non-priority controller. The embedded modem queries the controllers over the bus to confirm that the controllers storing the received data are available for data offload, and responsive to the confirmation, requests the stored data over the bus and transmits the stored data over a wide-area network to a telematics server.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

an embedded modem having an internal storage of a size insufficient to store received data, in communication over a vehicle bus with controllers each including data storage, programmed to

query the controllers over the bus to identify controllers having available storage for the received data,

if the available storage is located on a priority controller of the controllers, send the data over the bus to the priority controller for storage,

otherwise, if the available storage is available on a non-priority controller of the controllers, send the data over the bus to the non-priority controller for storage,

query the controllers over the bus to confirm that the controller storing the received data sent to the controller is available for data offload, including to confirm that the controllers are not operating in a motive mode, and

responsive to the confirmation, request the stored data over the bus and transmit the stored data over a wide-area network to a telematics server.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the embedded modem is further programmed to:

maintain a listing of identifiers of preferred controllers of the controllers, and

identify a controller as being one of the preferred controllers according to an identifier of the identified controller being included in the listing.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the data is diagnostic data to be offloaded over the wide-area network to the telematics server.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the data is a software update received over the wide-area network from the telematics server.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the embedded modem is further programmed to, if no available storage is located, reduce the data to conform to the size of the internal storage of the embedded modem.

6. A system comprising:

an embedded modem, in communication over a vehicle bus with controllers each including data storage, programmed to

query the controllers over the bus to identify controllers having available storage for received data,

if the available storage is located on a priority controller of the controllers, send the data over the bus to the priority controller for storage,

otherwise, if the available storage is available on a non-priority controller of the controllers, send the data over the bus to the non-priority controller for storage,

query the controllers over the bus to confirm that the controller storing the data sent to the controller is available for data offload including confirming that the controllers are not operating in a motive mode, and

responsive to the confirmation, request the stored data over the bus and transmit the stored data over a wide-area network to a telematics server.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein to confirm that the controllers are available includes confirming that the controllers have available processor time to provide the data.

8. The system of claim 6, wherein the data is diagnostic data to be offloaded over the wide-area network to the telematics server.

9. The system of claim 6, wherein the data is a software update received over the wide-area network from the telematics server.

10. A method comprising:

querying, by an embedded modem, controllers over a vehicle bus to identify controllers having available storage for received data;

if the available storage is located on a priority controller of the controllers, sending the data over the bus to the priority controller for storage;

otherwise, if the available storage is available on a non-priority controller of the controllers, sending the data over the bus to the non-priority controller for storage;

querying the controllers over the bus to confirm that the controller storing the data sent to the controller is available for data offload including confirming that the controllers are not operating in a motive mode; and

responsive to the confirmation, requesting the stored data over the bus and transmitting the stored data over a wide-area network to a telematics server.

11. The method of claim 10, further comprising confirming that the controllers are available by querying that the controllers have available processor time to provide the data.

12. The method of claim 10, wherein the data is diagnostic data to be offloaded over the wide-area network to the telematics server.

13. The method of claim 10, further comprising, if no available storage is located, reducing the data to conform to a size of an internal storage of the embedded modem.