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Wireless game control system

DC CAFC
  • US 6,684,062 B1
  • Filed: 10/25/2000
  • Issued: 01/27/2004
  • Est. Priority Date: 10/25/2000
  • Status: Expired due to Term
First Claim
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1. A wireless system for video game control comprised of a base transceiver engaged with an electronic game device where:

  • the base transceiver communicates wirelessly with one or more wireless controllers concurrently;

    the controllers are capable of translating user input into digitally coded data and sending this data to the base transceiver;

    the base transceiver is capable of relaying the data received from the controllers to the electronic game device thus allowing the users to remotely control the electronic game device;

    the wireless communication can be bidirectional to allow feedback information to be delivered from the electronic game device to the controllers;

    the bi-directional wireless communication, when present, can be either half duplex or full duplex;

    the base transceiver selects a channel palette of one or more channels to be used for wireless communication between the base transceiver and all controllers;

    the channel palette constitutes the collection of channels that the system uses to implement a frequency hopping pattern if more than one channel exists in the channel palette;

    the base transceiver and the controllers each check the integrity of all received packets using a checksum method and maintain a ratio of good versus damaged packets to characterize the quality of each channel;

    the base transceiver and the controllers each monitor the received signal strength of incoming packets to help identify poor channels;

    the base transceiver or the controllers or both collect and store RF channel performance data such as signal strength and channel quality;

    the controllers can send said stored RF channel performance data to the base transceiver;

    the base transceiver can adjust the channel palette to replace bad channels with better channels which it finds by periodically trying new channels, and by analyzing and interpreting its own measured channel performance data, or channel performance data received from the controllers, or both;

    the base transceiver can adjust the number of channels in the channel palette as the number of available good channels varies;

    the channel palette adjustments can be used to dynamically optimize communication reliability by avoiding the use of bad channels suffering from interference, obstacle attenuation, multipath nulls, other problems, or any combination of these problems;

    the base transceiver uses synchronous time domain multiplexing techniques to communicate with each controller by specifying a synchronous time slot during which each controller can communicate with the base transceiver;

    the frequency hopping and synchronous time domain multiplexing techniques are used in conjunction with one another to help ensure that packets are received intact on the first attempt thus circumventing the need to retransmit damaged packets and thereby achieving a small system latency with a small standard deviation and therefore minimizing the user'"'"'s perceived control lag;

    the controllers can use the synchronous time domain multiplexing to save power by turning off their radio transceivers when they are not receiving or transmitting data;

    the base transceiver can use the synchronous time domain multiplexing to save power by turning off its radio transceiver when it is not receiving or transmitting data.

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