Personal mobile internet

• US 20030174683A1
• Filed: 01/02/2003
• Published: 09/18/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 07/07/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson
• Original Assignee: Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson
• Inventors: Vegge, Sverre
• Granted Patent: US 7,243,164 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/338
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/04 specially adapted for terminals or networks with limited capabilities; specially adapted for terminal portability
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/306 User profiles
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/51 Discovery or management thereof, e.g. service location protocol [SLP] or web services
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/52 specially adapted for the location of the user terminal
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/53 using third party service providers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/329 in the application layer [OSI layer 7]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/40 Network security protocols

Abstract

A client-server based system for providing location related information and services to mobile users is disclosed. A plurality of servers, wherein a server is a provider of information and services related to a specific predefined geographical coverage area, operate in a tree-shaped network. An operating mobile client, preferably operating in a mobile phone or PAD of a mobile user, establishes upon connection to the network an association, based on client location information, with one server at a time. A server association can be transferred from one server to another on an existing network connection as the user relocates from one server coverage area to another, and a user profile stored with the client or a special user profile server is applied to the standard user interface in the current server to provide the client with a personal user interface adapted at any time to the requirements of the user and to the information and/or services available at the current server.

Claims

1. A client-server based information or service system for providing location dependent information or services to operating mobile clients, said system comprising a plurality of stationary servers arranged in a hierarchical ordered tree shaped network, characterized in that

each server is arranged to provide information or services corresponding to a predefined specific geographical area, said geographical area being non-overlapping to with respect to adjacent areas corresponding to servers on the same network hierarchy level, said geographical being subdevideable to comprise geographical areas corresponding to servers on lower network hierarchy levels,

any server is located at either the root, a branch node or a leaf of the tree shaped network, and

any operating mobile client has an association with only one server at a time, the association being transferable between adjacent servers of the tree shaped network on an existing connection of a client to the network, whereby a mobile client user obtains automatically or on user request information or services of interest pertaining to the specific geographical area of the corresponding server with which the client currently has an association.

2. System according to claim 1, characterized in that a user of a mobile client communicates with the server by means of a personal user interface transferred from the server to the client upon establishment of the association.

3. System according to claim 1, characterized in that the association of a mobile client with a server is dependent on user location information provided to any server by the client or a separate source of user location information.

4. System according to claim 2, characterized in that the personal user interface is derived, by the server, from a standard user interface or a subset of a standard user interface held in the server, by applying a user profile to the standard user interface.

5. System according to claim 2, characterized in that the personal user interface comprises at least a multi-level (hierarchical) menu of information or service item identifiers selectable by a client user.

6. System according to any one of the previous claims, characterized in that the client is a viewer application adapted to a standard protocol such as WWW or WAP, and the user interface is a collection of hyperlinks presented to the user by means of the viewer application, each hyperlink constituting an information or service request being sent to an associated server when selected by the user.

7. System according to claim 3, characterized in that the association of a client with a current server (server A) is transferred to a next server (server B) when the user location information indicates that the user relocates from a location within the coverage area of the respective current server (server A) to a location within the coverage area of the next server (server B).

8. System according to claim 4 or 5, characterized in that the user profile includes a personal user interface specification and at least one of a user identification, a user name or a telephone number, and

the user profile is stored with the client or a special user profile server.

9. System according to any one of the previous claims, characterized in that the root server can have no parent servers and any number of child servers, a branch node server can have one parent server any number of child servers, and a leaf server can have one parent server and no child servers.