Method for determining access time of repeatedly broadcast objects

• US 7,293,101 B1
• Filed: 04/16/1999
• Issued: 11/06/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 07/16/1998
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Sony International Europe Gmbh (Sony Group Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Sony International Europe Gmbh (Sony Group Corp.)
• Inventors: Zumkeller, Markus, Schaefer, Ralf, Bittner, Rudolf
• Primary Examiner(s): Cardone; Jason
• Assistant Examiner(s): MIRZA, ADNAN M
• Application Number:
  US09/293,702
• Time in Patent Office: 3,126 Days
• Field of Search: 709/232, 709/219, 370/349, 707/10
• US Class Current: 709/232
• CPC Class Codes: H04H 20/16 Arrangements for broadcast or for distribution of identical information repeatedly
• CPC Class Codes: H04H 20/28 Arrangements for simultaneous broadcast of plural pieces of information
• CPC Class Codes: H04H 20/40 Arrangements for broadcast specially adapted for accumulation-type receivers
• CPC Class Codes: H04H 2201/20 digital audio broadcasting [DAB]
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/0882 for the transmission of character code signals, e.g. for teletext circuits for the digital non-picture data signal H04N7/035

Abstract

Broadcast based information systems like Teletext use a unidirectional communication scheme in order to get access to information. This means that requests for data objects are not transmitted from a client to a server. Instead the receiver part of the client has to listen for the requested object on the broadcast medium and copy it to the local storage when it goes by. The access time from the receiver point of view is defined as the difference between the reception point in time of the object and the point in time when the request was made. Nowadays realized broadcast based information systems are not able to determine precisely when a requested object will be available. The present invention uses a repetition distance which defines an additional parameter which has to be transmitted with each broadcast data object at the transmitter side. The receiver can use this information to determine the precise repetition point in time of a requested object. This information can be used to realize a progress indicator, so that an user can be informed about the time he has to wait for the requested object. Also this information is essential for the realization of certain caching strategies.

Claims

1. A method for determining access times of a plurality of segments of a plurality of broadcast objects in a broadcast channel using a unidirectional communication scheme in order to transmit the plurality of broadcast objects from a server side to a receiver side, each of the plurality of said segments of said plurality of broadcast objects are permitted to (i) have a different size, (ii) be segmented into smaller units in order to allow overlapped transmission or parallel transmission, (iii) be transmitted in a different repetitive pattern, and (iv) be transmitted in a broadcast cycle in different orders,

said method characterized in that each segment of a broadcast object of a current broadcast cycle includes a header defining a repetition distance which is the distance between a completed transmission of the current segment of the broadcast object and the next transmission of a next segment of the broadcast object, and therefore a next reception point in time of said next segment of said broadcast object is calculated from a current time value and said repetition distance;

wherein said repetition distance is calculated using an iterative loop over all of said plurality of segments of the broadcast cycle in transmission order.

2. The method according to claim 1, characterized in that said repetition distance specifies how many of the plurality of broadcast objects will be transmitted after a specific broadcast object until this specific broadcast object will be transmitted again.

3. The method according to claim 1, characterized in that said repetition distance specifies how much data will be transmitted after a specific broadcast object until this specific broadcast object will be transmitted again.

4. The method according to claim 1, characterized in that said repetition distance specifies how much time it will take after a specific broadcast object is broadcast until this specific broadcast object will be transmitted again.

5. The method according to claim 2, characterized by an upper bound which specifies a maximum value for the repetition distance.

6. The method according to claim 2, characterized in that the repetition distance specifies an absolute value in the form of a repetition time.

7. The method according to claim 1, characterized in that on the server side a broadcast cycle generator describes a broadcast cycle as a sequence of segments and a sequence of objects, the sequence of objects describing which objects belong to the broadcast cycle and how often each object is included in the broadcast cycle, and the sequence of segments describing the transmission order of segments of all objects.

8. The method according to claim 7, characterized in that a parameter specifying an allocated bitrate for the transmission of objects is added if the repetition distance is encoded as a time value.

9. The method according to claim 7, characterized in that in a DAB system the broadcast cycle generator receives object parameters from a server application block, calculates the repetition distance of each object and selects segments for the transmission.

10. The method according to claim 1, characterized in that a broadcast object decoder retrieves a unique identifier of an object and the repetition distance and obtains the current time value from a time service, and an absolute value for a reception point in time is calculated from the repetition distance and the current time value and is stored together with the object.

11. The method according to claim 10, characterized in that a data object requester allows to request certain objects by an object identifier and allows to request the next reception point in time of an object.

12. The method according to claim 11, characterized in that the data object requester can use the repetition distance as repetition time information for managing a cache.

13. The method according to claim 1, characterized in that the method is used in a progress indicator.

14. A method for transmitting a plurality of segments of a plurality of broadcast objects from a server side to a receiver side in a broadcast channel using a unidirectional communication scheme wherein each of the plurality of said segments of said plurality of broadcast objects are permitted to (i) have a different size, (ii) be segmented into smaller units in order to allow overlapped transmission or parallel transmission, (iii) be transmitted in a different repetitive pattern, and (iv) be transmitted in a broadcast cycle in different orders, said method comprising the steps of:

attaching a header to a broadcast object of a current broadcast cycle, said header defining a repetition distance which is a distance between the point at which the transmission of the current segment of the broadcast object and the next transmission of a next segment of the broadcast object will be completed;

transmitting the broadcast object along with its header in the broadcast channel from the server side to the receiver side; and

calculating said repetition distance using an iterative loop over all of said plurality of segments of the broadcast cycle in transmission order.

15. The method according to claim 14, characterized in that said repetition distance specifies how many of the plurality of broadcast objects will be transmitted after a specific broadcast object until the specific broadcast object will be transmitted again.

16. The method according to claim 14, characterized in that said repetition distance specifies how much data will be transmitted after a specific broadcast object until the specific broadcast object will be transmitted again.

17. The method according to claim 14, characterized in that said repetition distance specifies how much time will elapse after a specific broadcast object is broadcast until this specific broadcast object will be transmitted again.