Activity display for multiple data channels over period of time

• US 20030038769A1
• Filed: 08/22/2001
• Published: 02/27/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 08/22/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Amy Powell, John F. Turpin, Stephen D. Follett
• Original Assignee: Amy Powell, John F. Turpin, Stephen D. Follett
• Inventors: Turpin, John F., Follett, Stephen D., Powell, Amy
• Granted Patent: US 7,109,991 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 345/89
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 17/23 Indication means, e.g. displays, alarms, audible means
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 24/00 Supervisory, monitoring or testing arrangements
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 24/08 Testing, supervising or monitoring using real traffic

Abstract

An activity display for multiple data channels over a period of time for a communication link provides a quasi-three-dimensional presentation having time periods and data channels as orthogonal axes and shading within each time period/data channel rectangle representing ones density for the channel during that time period. One or more frames of the communication link corresponding to one time period are captured, and then each frame is processed in sequence one data channel at a time to build up a line of the display for the time period. Over multiple time periods the display is built up line by line, with the oldest line being dropped as a new line is added when the maximum number of lines for the display is achieved. In this way an operator has a high level all-in-one glance at the operation of the communication link.

Claims

1. An activity display for multiple data channels of a communication link over a period of time comprising a quasi-three-dimensional graphics display having time periods as a first axis, data channels as a second axis orthogonal to the first axis, and a shade within each rectangle defined by the time periods and data channels corresponding to a one'"'"'s density for the data in the respective data channels during the respective time periods.

2. The activity display as recited in claim 1 wherein the shade is selected from a range of grey scale values.

3. The activity display as recited in claim 1 wherein the shade is selected from a plurality of color values.

4. A method of providing an activity display for multiple data channels of a communication link over a period of time comprising the steps of:

capturing a line of data from the communication link, the line of data having one or more frames of data corresponding to a predetermined time period, each frame of data having data for the multiple data channels;

processing each frame of the line of data in sequence to determine a ones density value for the data of each data channel during the predetermined time period; and

displaying the line of data as shades corresponding to the ones density values.

5. The method as recited in claim 4 further comprising the step of repeating the capturing, processing and displaying steps for a plurality of lines of data to produce a quasi-three-dimensional graphic display having the predetermined time periods as one axis, the data channels as an orthogonal axis, and the shades as a graphic fill for rectangles produced by the orthogonal axes.

6. The method as recited in claim 5 wherein the shades comprise a plurality of grey scale values corresponding to different specified patterns and percentages of ones density.

7. The method as recited in claim 5 wherein the shades comprise a plurality of color values corresponding to different specified patterns and percentages of ones density.

8. The method as recited in claim 4 wherein the processing step comprises the steps of:

for each frame in sequence of the line of data extracting data for the data channel of a current frame corresponding to a timeslot counter value;

matching the extracted data against known data patterns;

setting a pattern match indicator for the data channel according to whether a match is found with the known data patterns;

if no match is found recalculating the ones density based on the current frame and prior frames of the captured line of data; and

repeating the extracting, checking, setting and recalculating steps for each data channel of the current frame.

9. The method as recited in claim 8 further comprising the step of outputting one line of display data after all the frames have been processed for the line of data, the line of display data including the pattern match indicator and the recalculated ones density value for each data channel.