Thin-client

• US 6,584,404 B1
• Filed: 02/19/2002
• Issued: 06/24/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 02/19/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Furuno Electric Co, Ltd, Seiko Epson Corporation (Seiko Group)
• Original Assignee: eRide, Inc. (Furuno Electric Co, Ltd), Seiko Epson Corporation (Seiko Group)
• Inventors: Vaucher, Frederic, Rasmussen, Clark W., McBurney, Paul W., Victa, Kenneth U.
• Primary Examiner(s): ARTHUR JEANGLAUDE, GERTRUDE
• Application Number:
  US10/079,249
• Time in Patent Office: 490 Days
• Field of Search: 701/24, 701/33, 701/200, 701/213, 701/215, 345/738, 707/10, 709/224, 709/229
• US Class Current: 701/213
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 19/09 providing processing capability normally carried out by the receiver

Abstract

A thin-client navigation-satellite receiver network collects GPS pseudorange measurements and communicates them from many independent clients on a computer network to a server. The server computes the respective navigation solutions and sends the results back to each client. A client manager at the server includes a client-request handler that interfaces with the network and collects the discrete requests from each of the clients. An assembler builds complete data sets from one to five seconds worth of data gathered by the client-request handler and spins each ready-to-go job to a bank of navigation servers. A session manager coordinates the inputs-and-results communication on the network and sends its outputs to a client responder.

Claims

1. A thin-client navigation satellite receiver network, comprising:

a plurality of thin-client navigation devices each for collecting measurements from orbiting navigation satellites and each for displaying their respective navigational positions;

a network server for connection to a network and able to communicate with each one of the plurality of thin-client navigation devices, and for providing navigation solutions for each thin-client navigation device from measurements obtained by each;

an assembler associated with the network server and providing for a gathering of said measurements into complete jobs for processing;

at least one navigation server located at the network server and providing for navigation computations from each of said complete jobs for processing forwarded by the assembler; and

a session manager and client responder for providing said respective navigational positions to each of the plurality of thin-client navigation devices.

2. The network of claim 1, wherein:

the plurality of thin-client navigation devices each comprise a navigation platform that periodically sends JMS messages related to GPS satellite observational measurements to the network server.

3. The network of claim 1, wherein:

the plurality of thin-client navigation devices comprises thousands of navigation platform that all asynchronously and periodically send JMS messages related to their respective GPS-satellite observational measurements to the network server.

4. The network of claim 1, wherein:

the assembler provides for collection of JMS messages related to GPS-satellite observational measurements from the plurality of thin-client navigation devices and sorts them by client-ID into navigation processing buffer queues.

5. The network of claim 1, wherein:

the assembler sifts through asynchronously received messages from each client and organizes them into queues by client-ID such that when a navigation server is available to do some work, the whole amount of data in a respective client queue can be processed as far as the data can be taken, and wherein the memory states are saved in a scratch memory to be picked up later when processing can resume again, and wherein an inefficiency in switching the navigation processors between every JMS message is avoided.

6. A method for computing thousands of navigational solutions for widely distributed users, the method comprising the steps of:

obtaining a plurality of observational measurements with independent navigation platforms all connected to a single data network;

enterprise messaging such observational measurements from a plurality of network clients to a network server;

assembling respective ones of said observational measurements in a buffer according to corresponding ones of said network clients;

processing a run of data for a single one of said network clients by loading and saving processor memory states for each run; and

outputting navigation solutions back to said network clients that are derived from corresponding sets of said plurality of observational measurements.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein:

the step of processing a run of data occurs about once a second during initialization of a respective one of said independent navigation platforms.

8. The method of claim 6, wherein:

the step of processing a run of data occurs about every five seconds after an initialization of a respective one of said independent navigation platforms.