BROADCAST RECEIVER

• US 20110140848A1
• Filed: 08/24/2007
• Published: 06/16/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 08/24/2007
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Masahiro Abukawa, Naoyuki Tsushima, Nobuyoshi Okumura, Shinji Akatsu, Shu Murayama, Tsuyoshi Kasaura
• Original Assignee: Masahiro Abukawa, Naoyuki Tsushima, Nobuyoshi Okumura, Shinji Akatsu, Shu Murayama, Tsuyoshi Kasaura
• Inventors: Kasaura, Tsuyoshi, Tsushima, Naoyuki, Murayama, Shu, Okumura, Nobuyoshi, Akatsu, Shinji, Abukawa, Masahiro
• Application Number:
  US12/674,866
• Publication Number:
  US 20110140848A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 340/8.1
• CPC Class Codes: H04H 20/26 Arrangements for switching distribution systems
• CPC Class Codes: H04H 60/44 for identifying broadcast stations
• CPC Class Codes: H04H 60/51 of receiving stations

Abstract

A broadcast receiver stores history information about switching between sending-out stations, the history information including broadcast display state information, in a storage unit 7 while bringing the history information into correspondence with position information about a position of a vehicle, and compares current broadcast display state information acquired at a current position of the vehicle with broadcast display state information in history information which is extracted from the storage unit 7 and which corresponds to a position which is the same as the current position to determine that a sending-out station corresponding to history information which provides a display state which is the same as the display state of a broadcast wave currently being received as the vehicle travels is a switching destination.

Claims

1. A broadcast receiver comprising:

a receiving unit for receiving a broadcast wave sent out from a sending-out station;

a position acquiring unit for acquiring position information about a position of a moving object in which said broadcast receiver is mounted;

a broadcast display state acquiring unit for acquiring broadcast display state information showing a display state of the broadcast wave received by said receiving unit every time said moving object travels a distance;

a storage unit for storing history information about switching between sending-out stations, the history information including the broadcast display state information, while bringing the history information into correspondence with the position information about the position of said moving object;

an extracting unit for extracting history information from said storage unit;

a determining unit for comparing current broadcast display state information acquired at a current position of said moving object with broadcast display state information in history information which is extracted from said storage unit by said extracting unit and which corresponds to a position which is same as the current position to determine that a sending-out station corresponding to history information which provides a display state which is same as a display state of a broadcast wave currently being received as said moving object travels is a switching destination; and

a switching unit for changing the sending-out station from which to receive the broadcast wave by using said receiving unit according to a switching command from said determining unit.

2. The broadcast receiver according to claim 1, characterized in that the broadcast receiver includes a reception state acquiring unit for acquiring information showing a reception state of the broadcast wave from the receiving unit, and the determining unit determines whether or not the reception state of the broadcast wave has a predetermined allowable level on a basis of the information showing the reception state acquired by said reception state acquiring unit, and judges whether or not to change the sending-out station from which to receive the broadcast wave by using the receiving unit according to a result of this determination.

3. The broadcast receiver according to claim 2, characterized in that the broadcast receiver includes a reception state predicting unit for predicting a change tendency of the reception state which is caused by travel of the moving object on a basis of the information showing the reception state acquired by the reception state acquiring unit, and the determining unit judges whether or not to change the sending-out station from which to receive the broadcast wave by using the receiving unit according to a result of the prediction by said reception state predicting unit.

4. The broadcast receiver according to claim 2, characterized in that the determining unit accepts the information showing the reception state from the reception state acquiring unit as the moving object travels to analyze a change tendency of the reception state, and, when a result of the analysis showing that there is a tendency for said reception state to get worse is acquired, determines that the sending-out station from which to receive the broadcast wave by using the receiving unit should be changed.

5. The broadcast receiver according to claim 1, characterized in that the broadcast display state acquiring unit includes a playback unit for playing back received data of a broadcast wave to acquire broadcast display state information, and an error information acquiring unit for acquiring information showing an error frequency with which errors occur in the data playback by said playback unit, and the determining unit determines whether or not a playback state of the received data of the broadcast wave is at a predetermined level on a basis of information showing the error frequency acquired by said error information acquiring unit, and judges whether or not to change the sending-out station from which to receive the broadcast wave by using the receiving unit according to a result of said determination.

6. The broadcast receiver according to claim 5, characterized in that the determining unit receives the information showing the error frequency from the error information acquiring unit as the moving object travels to analyze a change tendency of the playback state of the received data, and, when a result of the analysis showing that there is a tendency for said playback state to get worse is acquired, determines that the sending-out station from which to receive the broadcast wave by using the receiving unit should be changed.

7. The broadcast receiver according to claim 1, characterized in that the position acquiring unit acquires, as position information, a traveling speed of the moving object as well as the position of the moving object, and the determining unit compares a current traveling speed of said moving object with a traveling speed in history information corresponding to the current position, and, when the current traveling speed is higher than the traveling speed in said history information, determines that an amount of noise in a current receiving environment is larger than that in a receiving environment in which said history information was acquired, whereas when the current traveling speed is lower than the traveling speed in said history information, the determining unit determines that the amount of noise in the current receiving environment is smaller than that in the receiving environment in which said history information was acquired.

8. The broadcast receiver according to claim 1, characterized in that the position acquiring unit acquires, as position information, a traveling direction of the moving object as well as the position of the moving object, and the determining unit compares a current traveling direction of said moving object with a traveling direction in history information corresponding to the current position, and, when the current traveling direction is same as the traveling direction in said history information, refers to history information corresponding to position information including this traveling direction for determination of whether or not to carry out the switching between sending-out stations, whereas when the current traveling direction is different from the traveling direction in said history information, the determining unit does not refer to the history information corresponding to the position information including this traveling direction for the determination of whether or not to carry out the switching between sending-out stations.

9. The broadcast receiver according to claim 1, characterized in that the broadcast receiver has a line-of-sight determining unit for, on a basis of the position information about the moving object and map information including the position of said moving object and a position of the sending-out station, determining whether a line-of-sight path of the broadcast wave between said sending-out station and said moving object falls within a permissible range.

10. The broadcast receiver according to claim 1, characterized in that the position acquiring unit acquires, as position information, a traveling speed or an acceleration of the moving object as well as the position of the moving object, and the determining unit determines whether or not the vehicle is traveling at a high speed or suddenly accelerating on a basis of a result of a comparison between said traveling speed or said acceleration and a predetermined threshold, and, when determining that the vehicle is traveling at a high speed or suddenly accelerating, refers to history information corresponding to position information including this traveling speed or acceleration for determination of whether or not to carry out the switching between sending-out stations, whereas when determining that the vehicle is not traveling at a high speed or suddenly accelerating, the determining unit does not refer to the history information corresponding to the position information including the traveling speed or acceleration for the determination of whether or not to carry out the switching between sending-out stations.

11. The broadcast receiver according to claim 1, characterized in that the broadcast receiver includes a chattering preventing unit for storing a switching command from the determining unit when the switching command has occurred repeatedly within a fixed time interval and for setting a newest switching command to the switching unit after said fixed time interval has elapsed.

12. The broadcast receiver according to claim 1, characterized in that the broadcast receiver includes a storage commanding unit for storing the history information in the storage unit in units of storage by defining, as the units of storage, either equal fixed-sized grid areas into which a whole area on a map is divided or road regions each having a fixed distance, and a storage unit changing unit for merging one of said grid areas or said road regions which corresponds to history information which has been neither update-d nor read within a predetermined time period with a neighboring grid area or road region to store said history information in the storage unit as history information corresponding to the merged grid areas or road regions.

13. The broadcast receiver according to claim 1, characterized in that when no history information corresponding to a desired position is stored in the storage unit, the extracting unit extracts history information corresponding to a position neighboring to said desired position and outputs the history information to a discriminating unit.

14. The broadcast receiver according to claim 5, characterized in that the broadcast receiver includes an error concealment mode switching unit for switching the playback unit to an operation mode in which the playback unit performs error concealment on data to be played back of the broadcast wave.

15. The broadcast receiver according to claim 1, characterized in that when the history information stored in the storage unit reaches a certain amount, the extracting unit determines reference information to be compared with the history information when the determining unit determines whether or not to carry out the switching between sending-out stations on a basis of the history information and by using SVM (Support Vector Machine).

16. The broadcast receiver according to claim 1, characterized in that the broadcast receiver has a moving-object-to-moving-object communication unit for acquiring history information from a broadcast receiver mounted in another moving object.