HOST CONTROLLER INTERFACE AND MESSAGING METHOD FOR ANT APPLICATIONS

• US 20140378064A1
• Filed: 06/20/2014
• Published: 12/25/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 06/21/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Avago Technologies International Sales Pte Limited (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Broadcom Corporation (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Inventors: Tsaur, Lih-Feng, Ding, Shawn, Xie, Guoxin, Jiang, Shanshan, Wang, Hsiao-Kai, Liu, Daochun
• Granted Patent: US 9,258,671 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 455/41.3
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/80 Services using short range communication, e.g. near-field communication [NFC], radio-frequency identification [RFID] or low energy communication
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 84/18 Self-organising networks, e.g. ad-hoc networks or sensor networks

Abstract

A system and method using ANT and/or ANT+ protocols for one or more ANT and/or ANT+ applications. The system can include a Bluetooth interface and a Host Controller Interface (HCI) that are configured to process incoming and outgoing ANT and/or ANT+ messages from/to one or more ANT and/or ANT+ enabled devices. The ANT and/or ANT+ messages can be communicated to one or more ANT and/or ANT+ enabled devices utilizing a Bluetooth transceiver. The Bluetooth interface and the HCI can be configured to wrap one or more ANT and/or ANT+ messages with a header and/or to remove a header from one or more wrapped ANT and/or ANT+ messages. The header can be an HCI compatible header.

Claims

1. A Bluetooth integrated circuit (IC), comprising:

a host controller interface (HCI) configured to;

receive an ANT HCI command from a host; and

remove a header from the ANT HCI command to generate an ANT command;

an ANT controller communicatively coupled to the HCI, and configured to;

receive the ANT command from the HCI; and

process the ANT command; and

a Bluetooth transceiver communicatively coupled to the ANT controller and configured to communicate the processed ANT command to a communication device.

2. The Bluetooth IC of claim 1, wherein the header comprises a flag field, an opcode field, a length field, and a padding field.

3. The Bluetooth IC of claim 2, wherein the opcode field comprises an Opcode Command Field (OCF) and an Opcode Group Field (OGF).

4. The Bluetooth IC of claim 3, wherein the HCI is configured to:

identify the ANT HCI command as a vendor-specific command based on the OCF;

identify the ANT HCI command as a command associated with an ANT protocol based on the OGF; and

forward the ANT command to the ANT controller.

5. The Bluetooth IC of claim 2, wherein the ANT HCI command comprises a payload that includes the ANT command.

6. The Bluetooth IC of claim 1, wherein the ANT controller is configured to:

attempt to queue the ANT HCI command in a queue;

generate an acknowledgement message that is indicative of whether the ANT HCI command was queued successfully; and

provide the acknowledgement message to the HCI.

7. The Bluetooth IC of claim 6, wherein the HCI is configured to:

receive the acknowledgement message from the ANT controller;

generate an ANT event based on the acknowledgement message, the ANT event including;

a flag field, an event opcode field, a length field, a number of packets field, a command opcode field, and a status field.

8. The Bluetooth IC of claim 7, wherein the HCI is configured to generate the status field to be indicative of whether the ANT HCI command has been queued successfully.

9. The Bluetooth IC of claim 6, wherein the command opcode field comprises an Opcode Command Field (OCF) and an Opcode Group Field (OGF).

10. The Bluetooth IC of claim 1, further comprising a Bluetooth controller communicatively coupled to the HCI and the Bluetooth transceiver, and configured to control a Bluetooth device using the Bluetooth transceiver.

11. The Bluetooth IC of claim 1, wherein the Bluetooth transceiver is configured to receive an ANT event from the communication device, and

wherein the HCI is configured to:

wrap the ANT event with a second header to generate an ANT HCI event, and

provide the ANT HCI event to the host.

12. A Bluetooth integrated circuit (IC), comprising:

a Bluetooth transceiver configured to receive an ANT event from a communication device;

an ANT controller communicatively coupled to the Bluetooth transceiver, and configured to;

receive the ANT event from the Bluetooth transceiver; and

process the ANT event; and

a host controller interface (HCI) configured to;

receive the processed ANT event from the ANT controller;

wrap the processed ANT event with a header to generate an ANT HCI event; and

transmit the ANT HCI event to a host.

13. The Bluetooth IC of claim 12, wherein the header comprises a flag field, an opcode field, a length field, a subcode field, and a status field.

14. The Bluetooth IC of claim 13, wherein the opcode field is configured to indicate that the ANT HCI event is a vendor-specific event, and wherein the subcode field is configured to indicate that the ANT HCI event is an event associated with an ANT protocol.

15. The Bluetooth IC of claim 12, wherein the ANT HCI event comprises a payload that includes the ANT event.

16. The Bluetooth IC of claim 12, wherein the ANT event is generated and provided by the communication device in response to an ANT HCI command previously generated by the host.

17. The Bluetooth IC of claim 12, wherein the HCI is configured to:

receive an ANT HCI command from the host, the ANT HCI having a second header; and

remove the second header from the ANT HCI command to generate an ANT command; and

wherein the Bluetooth transceiver is configured to transmit the ANT command to the communication device.

18. A Bluetooth integrated circuit (IC), comprising:

a Bluetooth transceiver configured to wirelessly communicate with a Bluetooth external device and an ANT external device;

an ANT controller configured to control the ANT external device using the Bluetooth transceiver;

a Bluetooth controller configured to control the Bluetooth external device using the Bluetooth transceiver;

a host controller interface (HCI) configured to;

receive commands from a host that is external to the Bluetooth IC;

examine headers of the commands to distinguish an ANT command from a Bluetooth command; and

forward the ANT command to the ANT controller and the Bluetooth command to the Bluetooth controller based on the headers.

19. The Bluetooth IC of claim 18, wherein:

the ANT controller is configured to provide an acknowledgement message to the HCI indicating whether the ANT command has been queued for processing; and

the HCI is configured to generate an HCI event having a status field that reflects whether the ANT command has been queued for processing by the ANT controller, and forward the HCI event to the host.

20. The Bluetooth IC of claim 18, wherein:

the ANT controller is configured to generate an event in response to receiving data received by Bluetooth transceiver, the data originating from the ANT external device; and

the HCI is configured to wrap the event with a header that identifies the event as an ANT related communication, and forward the wrapped event to the host.