MOBILE NETWORK BASED GEOFENCING

• US 20160142872A1
• Filed: 05/13/2014
• Published: 05/19/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 06/26/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: NICHOLSON, Robert B., SRIVATSA, Mudhakar, GANTI, Kiran Raghu, VERMA, Dinesh
• Granted Patent: US 9,998,860 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/55 Push-based network services
• 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 76/27 Transitions between radio resource control [RRC] states

Abstract

Managing a geofence of a mobile device in a network is provided, which includes: identifying, by a first application operable with the mobile device, the geofence associated with the mobile device or a user of the mobile device; based on identifying the geofence, registering the identified geofence with a network component; identifying, to a first granularity, a first location for the identified geofence; monitoring, to a second granularity, a location of the mobile device, where the first granularity is more coarse-grained than the second granularity; and based on the mobile device triggering the geofence, pushing a notification to the application; and based on receiving the notification, performing an operation associated with the geofence.

Claims

1. A system for managing a geofence of a mobile device in a network, the system comprising:

a memory; and

a processor communicatively coupled to the memory, wherein the system performs a method comprising;

based on identifying a geofence associated with a mobile device or a user of the mobile device, registering the identified geofence with a network component;

identifying, to a first granularity, a first location for the identified geofence;

monitoring, to a second granularity, a location of the mobile device, wherein the first granularity is more coarse-grained than the second granularity; and

based on the mobile device triggering the geofence, pushing a notification to a first application operable with the mobile device to facilitate performing an operation associated with the geofence.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein based on registering the identified geofence, the first application to put the application or mobile device into a power-saving state.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein based on receiving the notification, the first application to wake up the application or mobile device from the power-saving state.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the system further performs:

registering the geofence with a geofence core of the network component,

the geofence core for;

accepting the registration for the geofence;

identifying, to the first granularity, the first location;

distributing a request to a geofence edge device, the request comprising the identified geofence, the geofence edge device to accept the request, monitor, to the second granularity, the location of the mobile device, and sending an alert event to the geofence core based on the mobile device triggering the geofence; and

based on receiving the alert event from the geofence edge device, pushing the notification to the mobile device.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the system further performs:

distributing a request to each of a set of geofence edge devices, the set of geofence edge devices covering the range of the first location.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the system further performs:

identifying, to a first granularity of area, the first location for the identified geofence; and

monitoring, to a second granularity of area, the location of the mobile device, wherein the first granularity of area covers a larger area than the second granularity of area.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein the system further performs:

identifying, to a first granularity of time, the first location for the identified geofence; and

monitoring, to a second granularity of time, the location of the mobile device, wherein the first granularity of time is less frequent than the second granularity of time.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the first application is operable to create the geofence.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein the first application is operable to interact with the user.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein the first application is operable on the mobile device.

11. The system of claim 1, wherein the first application is operable on a server device associated with the mobile device.

12. The system of claim 1, wherein the system further performs, based on the first application performing the operation, sending, by a second application, a message to the mobile device.

13. The system of claim 1, wherein the first application is operable to identify the geofence associated with a second location of the mobile device or the user.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein the system further performs, based on the second location changing, sending a push request to identify a geofence associated with the changed second location.

15. A method of managing a geofence of a mobile device in a network, comprising:

based on identifying a geofence associated with a mobile device or a user of the mobile device, registering the identified geofence with a network component;

identifying to a first granularity, a first location for the identified geofence;

monitoring to a second granularity, a location of the mobile device, wherein the first granularity is more coarse-grained than the second granularity; and

based on the mobile device triggering the geofence, pushing a notification to a first application operable with the mobile device to facilitate performing an operation associated with the geofence.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein based on the registering of the identified geofence, the first application to put the application or mobile device into a power-saving state.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein based on receiving the notification, the first application to wake up the application or mobile device from the power-saving state.

18. The method of claim 15, further comprising:

registering the geofence with a geofence core of the network component, the geofence core for;

accepting the registration for the geofence;

identifying to the first granularity, the first location;

distributing a request to a geofence edge device, the request comprising the identified geofence, the geofence edge device to accept the request, monitor, to the second granularity, the location of the mobile device, and sending an alert event to the geofence core based on the mobile device triggering the geofence;

based on receiving an alert event from the geofence edge device, pushing the notification to the mobile device.

19. The method of claim 18, further comprising:

distributing, by the geofence core, a request to each of a set of geofence edge devices, the set of geofence edge devices covering the range of the first location.

20-30. -30. (canceled)

31. A computer program product for managing a geofence of a mobile device in a network, the computer program product comprising:

a computer-readable storage medium having program instructions embodied therewith, the program instructions being executable by a processor to cause the processor to perform a method comprising;

based on identifying a geofence associated with a mobile device or a user of the mobile device, registering the identified geofence with a network component;

identifying to a first granularity, a first location for the identified geofence;

monitoring to a second granularity, a location of the mobile device, wherein the first granularity is more coarse-grained than the second granularity; and

based on the mobile device triggering the geofence, pushing a notification to a first application operable with the mobile device to facilitate performing an operation associated with the geofence.