MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK AND METHOD FOR RETRIEVING SOFTWARE IDENTIFICATION INFORMATION PERTAINING TO A SENSOR IN A NETWORK

• US 20130013088A1
• Filed: 11/23/2010
• Published: 01/10/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 11/26/2009
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Alcatel-Lucent SA (Nokia Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Alcatel-Lucent SA (Nokia Corporation)
• Inventors: Liekens, Werner, Van Bogaert, Bruno, Van Leeuwen, Tom, Justen, Pascal, Acke, Willem Jozef Amaat
• Application Number:
  US13/504,320
• Publication Number:
  US 20130013088A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 700/90
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/66 Arrangements for connecting between networks having differing types of switching systems, e.g. gateways
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0213 Standardised network management protocols, e.g. simple network management protocol [SNMP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/12 specially adapted for proprietary or special-purpose networking environments, e.g. medical networks, sensor networks, networks in vehicles or remote metering networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/34 involving the movement of software or configuration parameters network booting or remote initial program loading [RIPL] G06F9/4416

Abstract

The invention concerns using sensorML to facilitate the installation of software for interaction with sensors, preferably within a home network with a service gateway (100). According to the invention, a management framework (130) is provided to manage a sensor controlling means, adapted to transmit management instructions to said sensor controlling means, and to receive information in sensorML format, wherein the information comprises software identification information. According to another aspect of the invention, a method is provided for retrieving software identification information pertaining to a sensor in a network, comprising accessing a sensorML document (400), and extracting software identification information from it.

Claims

1. A management framework for use in a system comprising a sensor controlling means for controlling at least one sensor, said management framework comprising means to generate and transmit management instructions to said sensor controlling means, and means to receive and parse information formatted according to a sensorML format, wherein said information comprises software identification information.

2. The management framework according to claim 1, wherein said software identification information pertains to firmware for said at least one sensor.

3. The management framework according to claim 1, wherein said sensor controlling means comprises a sensor abstraction layer, and wherein said software identification information pertains to software to be run in said sensor abstraction layer.

4. The management framework according to claim 1, wherein said sensor controlling means comprises a protocol layer, and wherein said software identification information pertains to software to be run in said protocol layer.

5. The sensor according to claim 1, wherein said software identification information comprises a uniform resource locator (URL).

6. The sensor according to claim 1, wherein said software identification information comprises a version identifier.

7. The sensor according to claim 1, wherein said management instructions are formatted according to a TR-069 format.

8. A service gateway comprising the management framework according to claim 1.

9. A method for identifying software for interacting with a sensor in a network, said method comprising using a sensorML document containing software identification information pertaining to a number of sensor types, said sensor belonging to a sensor type among said number of sensor types.

10. The method according to claim 9, further comprising:

accessing said sensorML document; and

extracting said software identification information pertaining to said sensor from said sensorML document.

11. The method according to claim 10, wherein said sensorML document is stored among a plurality of sensorML documents, said method further comprising:

detecting attachment of said sensor to said network; and

determining a type identifier of said sensor;

using said type identifier to select said sensorML document from among said plurality of sensorML documents.

12. The method according to claim 9, further comprising:

installing software identified by said software identification information.

13. The method of claim 9, wherein said software identification information pertains to firmware for said sensor.

14. The method of claim 9, wherein said software identification information comprises a uniform resource locator (URL).

15. The method of claim 10, wherein said network is a residential network comprising a service gateway, and wherein said extracting is performed by said service gateway.