CELL NOTIFICATION

• US 20100113067A1
• Filed: 11/04/2008
• Published: 05/06/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 11/04/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: CommScope Technologies, LLC (CommScope Holding Company, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: 2Wire, Inc. (CommScope Holding Company, Inc.)
• Inventors: Romano, Pasquale, Fullam, Scott
• Granted Patent: US 8,155,670 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 455/456.300
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/55 Push-based network services
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/04 Protocols for data compression, e.g. ROHC
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/4234 Remote access to features of PBX or home telephone systems-teleworking in a PBX
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 36/0055 Transmission or use of information for re-establishing the radio link
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/021 Services related to particular areas, e.g. point of interest [POI] services, venue services or geofences
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/12 Messaging; Mailboxes; Announcements
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/18 Information format or content conversion, e.g. adaptation by the network of the transmitted or received information for the purpose of wireless delivery to users or terminals
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 68/00 User notification, e.g. alerting and paging, for incoming communication, change of service or the like
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 88/08 Access point devices

Abstract

A system and method for enabling an access point to determine that a mobile device has crossed a wireless coverage area boundary associated with the access point and select, for transmission to the mobile device, an audible notification indicating the mobile device has crossed the wireless coverage boundary associated with the access point, wherein the audible notification is stored at the access point in compressed form, prior to determining the mobile device has crossed the wireless coverage area boundary.

Claims

1. A method in an access point, comprising:

determining that a mobile device has crossed a wireless coverage area boundary associated with the access point; and

selecting for transmission to the mobile device, an audible notification indicating the mobile device has crossed the wireless coverage boundary associated with the access point, wherein the audible notification is stored at the access point in compressed form, prior to determining the mobile device has crossed the wireless coverage area boundary.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein determining that the mobile device has crossed the wireless coverage area boundary associated with the access point comprises:

receiving a request for a wireless communication session handoff for the mobile device between a network cell tower and the access point.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising:

accepting the wireless communication session handoff; and

transmitting the compressed audible notification to the mobile device responsive to accepting the wireless communication session handoff.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein transmitting the compressed audible notification to the mobile device comprises:

establishing a wireless communication session with the mobile device;

receiving a compressed audio stream from a service provider for transmission to the mobile device via the wireless communication session; and

encoding the compressed audible notification within the compressed audio stream for transmission to the mobile device via the wireless communication session.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein encoding the compressed audible notification within the compressed audio stream for transmission to the mobile device via the wireless communication session comprises:

selecting the compressed audible notification from a plurality of compressed audible notifications stored at the access point, wherein each compressed audible notification is stored at the access point in compressed form prior to determining the mobile device has crossed the wireless coverage area boundary;

replacing a segment of the compressed audio stream from the service provider with the selected compressed audible notification; and

transmitting the selected compressed audible notification to the wireless device within the compressed audio stream via the replaced segment of the compressed audio stream.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the replaced segment of the compressed audio stream comprises one or more sequential data frames within a plurality of data frames of the compressed audio stream, the one or more sequential data frames comprising the compressed audible notification.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising:

adding taper data at one or more frame boundaries of the one or more sequential data frames to reduce amplitude discontinuity between the compressed audio stream and the compressed audible notification.

8. The method of claim 6, further comprising:

adding lead-in taper data to a first frame boundary of the one or more sequential data frames of the compressed audio stream, the lead-in taper data to reduce a first amplitude discontinuity between a trailing portion of the compressed audio stream preceding a leading portion of the compressed audible notification; and

adding lead-out taper data to a second frame boundary of the one or more sequential data frames of the compressed audio stream, the lead-out taper data to reduce a second amplitude discontinuity between a leading portion of the compressed audio stream following a trailing portion of the compressed audible notification.

9. The method of claim 5, further comprising:

decompressing a trailing portion of the compressed audio stream preceding the compressed audible notification, a leading portion of the compressed audible notification, a trailing portion of the compressed audible notification, and a leading portion of the compressed audio stream following the compressed audible notification;

reducing amplitude discontinuities within the trailing portion of the compressed audio stream, the leading portion of the compressed audible notification, the trailing portion of the compressed audible notification, and the leading portion of the compressed audio stream, wherein reducing amplitude discontinuities comprises one or more of matching adjacent amplitude discontinuities, blending the adjacent amplitude discontinuities, and band limit filtering the adjacent amplitude discontinuities; and

re-compressing the decompressed portions of the compressed audio stream and the compressed audible notification after reducing the amplitude discontinuities.

10. The method of claim 4, wherein the compressed audio stream comprises a voice stream compressed in accordance with one of:

Adaptive Multi-Rate compression (AMR) on a Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) operated by the service provider;

or

Linear Predictive Coding (LPC) on a Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) system operated by the service provider.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the compressed audible notification comprises one or more of:

an audible beep stored at the access point in compressed form;

an audible tone stored at the access point in compressed form;

an arbitrary waveform comprising recorded sound and stored in compressed form;

a pre-recorded audible voice message stored at the access point in compressed form; and

a synthesized audible voice message stored at the access point in compressed form.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the access point comprises a femto cell base station.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein the compressed audible notification to further indicate to the mobile device, availability of one or more services within the coverage area provided by the access point.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the one or more services comprise at least one of:

alternate billing rates for voice telephony communications;

alternate billing rates for data communications;

improved bit-rates for voice telephony communications;

improved transfer speeds for data communications;

local file sharing capabilities between the mobile device and other electronic devices communicatively interfaced with the access point;

location notification services indicating whether other mobile devices associated with the access point are communicatively interfaced with the access point;

e-commerce services enabling the mobile device to access media and services from the mobile device; and

local Private Branch eXchange (PBX) services between the mobile device and other telephony devices communicatively interfaced with the access point.

15. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

sending a second compressed audible notification to the mobile device indicating the mobile device has again crossed the wireless coverage area boundary associated with the access point, wherein the second compressed audible notification is stored at the access point in compressed form prior to determining the mobile device has crossed the wireless coverage area boundary a second time.

16. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

sending an application interface notification to the mobile device, the application interface notification indicating the mobile device has crossed the wireless coverage boundary associated with the access point, wherein the application interface notification comprises one of;

a Short Message Service (SMS) message originating at the access point;

a JAVA compatible application prompt directed at a JAVA virtual machine compatible servlet application executing at the mobile device; and

a HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) compatible data transfer instructing an Internet browser operating at the mobile device to display a web page originating at the access point.

17. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving a plurality of compressed audible notifications from a service provider communicatively interfaced with the access point;

receiving a notification map from the service provider, wherein the notification mapping comprises a mapping of access point notification events to one or more of the plurality of compressed audible notifications, the access point notification events to trigger the access point to send one or more of the plurality of compressed audible notifications to the mobile device; and

wherein

selecting for transmission to the mobile device, the audible notification indicating the mobile device has crossed the wireless coverage boundary associated with the access point comprises, selecting the audible notification from the plurality of compressed audible notifications received from the service provider based on the notification map.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein selecting the audible notification from the plurality of compressed audible notifications based on the notification map further comprises selecting the audible notification based on one or more of the following:

a time of day in relation to a time based schedule;

a guest or member status of the mobile device in relation to the access point;

a current population of other mobile devices associated with the access point;

one or more environmental attributes accessible to the access point, the environmental attributes comprising internal temperature, external temperature, humidity, and local weather report data; and

network condition information in relation to the access point, wherein network condition information comprises network link failure, low bandwidth status, network status report data, and excessive link delay status.

19. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

sending the compressed audible notification to a service provider communicatively interfaced with the access point for transmission to a telephonic device attached with the mobile device via an end-to-end telephony interface, the compressed audible notification indicating to the telephonic device that the mobile device has crossed the wireless coverage area boundary associated with the access point.

20. An access point comprising:

a memory to store an audible notification in a pre-compressed form prior to the access point establishing communications with a mobile device to receive the audible notification; and

a segment replacer to encode the pre-compressed audible notification into a compressed audio stream destined for the mobile device upon establishing communications with the mobile device.

21. The access point of claim 20, further comprising:

a backhaul interface communicatively attached with a service provider to accept the compressed audio stream for transmission to the mobile device; and

a transmitter to send the compressed audio stream having the pre-compressed audible notification encoded therein to the mobile device, wherein the pre-compressed audible notification to indicate to the mobile device that it crossed a wireless coverage area boundary associated with the access point.

22. The access point of claim 21, further comprising:

a matcher-blender-filter unit to reduce amplitude discontinuities within the compressed audio stream having the pre-compressed audible notification encoded therein.

23. The access point of claim 21, further comprising:

a blender unit to add taper data at one or more frame boundaries of the compressed audio stream adjacent to the pre-compressed audible notification therein, the taper data to reduce amplitude discontinuity within the compressed audio stream.

24. An access point comprising:

means for determining a mobile device has crossed a wireless coverage area boundary associated with the access point; and

means for encoding a compressed audible notification into a compressed audio stream indicating the mobile device is entering the coverage area without decompressing or recompressing any portion of the compressed audio stream.

25. The access point of claim 24, further comprising:

means for transmitting the compressed audible notification to the mobile device within the compressed audio stream; and

means for notifying an end-user of the limits of a wireless coverage area associated with the access point via the compressed audible notification sent to the mobile device.