Vehicular communication device

• US 10,257,661 B2
• Filed: 01/28/2016
• Issued: 04/09/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 02/03/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. (Huawei Investment & Holding Co., Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: DENSO Corporation
• Inventors: Kumabe, Seigou
• Primary Examiner(s): Blouin, Mark S
• Application Number:
  US15/545,829
• Publication Number:
  US 20180020332A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,167 Days
• Field of Search: 340930
• CPC Class Codes: B60W 2556/45 External transmission of data to or from the vehicle
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/305 by remotely controlling device operation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2221/2101 Auditing as a secondary aspect
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2221/2115 Third party
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/096716 where the received information does not generate an automatic action on the vehicle control
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/096758 where no selection takes place on the transmitted or the received information
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/096783 where the origin of the information is a roadside individual element
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/096791 where the origin of the information is another vehicle
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/162 event-triggered
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/164 Centralised systems, e.g. external to vehicles
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 24/08 Testing, supervising or monitoring using real traffic
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/30 Services specially adapted for particular environments, situations or purposes
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/44 for communication between vehicles and infrastructures, e.g. vehicle-to-cloud [V2C] or vehicle-to-home [V2H]
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/46 for vehicle-to-vehicle communication [V2V]
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 88/02 Terminal devices

Abstract

A vehicular communication device is provided. The vehicular communication device includes a reception section that, from a periphery vehicle equipped with a wide area communicator, receives a communication performance index representing performance of the wide area communicator, and a controller. The controller includes a reference value setup section that successively settles a reference value as a criterion based on the communication performance indexes received from multiple periphery vehicles, an acquisition section that acquires the communication performance index for a targeted wide area communicator which is the wide area communicator targeted at anomaly determination, and an anomaly determination section that determines an anomaly of the targeted wide area communicator based on comparison between the reference value settled by the reference value setup section and the communication performance index acquired by the acquisition section for the targeted wide area communicator.

Claims

1. A vehicular communication device used for a vehicle, comprising:

a reception section that, from a periphery vehicle equipped with a wide area communicator to connect a wide area communication network for performing communication, receives a communication performance index representing performance of the wide area communicator;

a reference value setup section that successively settles a reference value as a criterion for the communication performance index based on the communication performance indexes received by the reception section from a plurality of the periphery vehicles;

an acquisition section that acquires the communication performance index for a targeted wide area communicator, wherein a targeted wide area communicator is the wide area communicator targeted at anomaly determination; and

an anomaly determination section that determines an anomaly of the targeted wide area communicator based on comparison between the reference value settled by the reference value setup section and the communication performance index acquired by the acquisition section for the targeted wide area communicator.

2. The vehicular communication device according to claim 1, wherein:

the acquisition section acquires any of the communication performance indexes acquired by the reception section from a plurality of the periphery vehicles as the communication performance index for the targeted wide area communicator.

3. The vehicular communication device according to claim 1, wherein:

the vehicular communication device includes the wide area communicator; and

the acquisition section acquires, as the communication performance index for the targeted wide area communicator, the communication performance index for the wide area communicator that is included in the sane vehicular communication device as the acquisition section is included.

4. The vehicular communication device according to claim 2, further comprising:

a first anomaly notification processing section that, when the anomaly determination section determines that the targeted wide area communicator is abnormal, uses a specified communicator to notify a center that the wide area communicator of the periphery vehicle serving as the targeted wide area communicator is abnormal.

5. The vehicular communication device according to claim 3, further comprising:

a notifier that notifies information to an occupant of the vehicle; and

a second anomaly notification processing section that, when the anomaly determination section determines that the targeted wide area communicator is abnormal, causes the notifier to notify that there is the anomaly in the wide area communicator of a subject vehicle serving as the vehicle including the targeted wide area communicator.

6. The vehicular communication device according to claim 3, wherein

the vehicular communication device includes:

a narrow area communicator that communicates with at least one of the periphery vehicle and a roadside device; and

a third anomaly notification processing section that, when the anomaly determination section determines that the targeted wide area communicator is abnormal, causes the narrow area communicator to transmit a request notifying a center that the wide area communicator of a subject vehicle serving as the vehicle including the targeted wide area communicator is abnormal.

7. The vehicular communication device according to claim 1, wherein:

the reception section receives positioning result information in addition to the communication performance index, the positioning result information being specified based on a positioning signal the periphery vehicle having transmitted the communication performance index receives from a positioning satellite; and

when the positioning result information received from the plurality of periphery vehicles indicates that the positioning signal cannot be satisfactorily received from the positioning satellite, the anomaly determination section does not perform anomaly determination on the targeted wide area communicator.

8. The vehicular communication device according to claim 1, wherein

the reception section receives telecommunications carrier information in addition to the communication performance index, the telecommunications carrier information indicating a telecommunications carrier to which the wide area communicator is connected,

the vehicular communication device further comprising

a roaming determination section that determines whether to be located in a changeover area that changes a telecommunications carrier used by the wide area communicator, based on the telecommunications carrier information received by the reception section,

wherein

when the roaming determination section determines the changeover area, the anomaly determination section does not perform anomaly determination on the targeted wide area communicator.