Aggregating and routing sensor data at a community sensor-coordinating entity

• US 8,963,692 B2
• Filed: 10/29/2010
• Issued: 02/24/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 10/29/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Cisco Technology, Inc. (Cisco Systems, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Cisco Technology, Inc. (Cisco Systems, Inc.)
• Inventors: Sanders, Jeffery A.
• Primary Examiner(s): Lim, Steven
• Assistant Examiner(s): Yacob, Sisay
• Application Number:
  US12/916,275
• Publication Number:
  US 20120105214A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,579 Days
• Field of Search: 340/10.42, 340/10.1, 340/10.4, 340/10.41, 340/5.2, 340/5.61, 340/5.81, 340/5.83, 340/572.1, 340/573.1, 340/568.1, 705/400, 709/204, 709/223, 455/466, 719/328
• US Class Current: 340/10.42
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/12 specially adapted for proprietary or special-purpose networking environments, e.g. medical networks, sensor networks, networks in vehicles or remote metering networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/63 Routing a service request depending on the request content or context
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/38 for collecting sensor information

Abstract

In one embodiment, a method includes receiving sensor data from multiple sensors associated with multiple persons; for each of the sensors, identifying the person associated with the sensor; determining whether the sensor data are valid; and, for the sensor data that are valid, aggregating them based on the associations of their sensors with the persons and routing them to one or more sensor-application-service providers based on associations of the persons with the sensor-application-service providers.

Claims

1. A method comprising, by one or more computer systems:

receiving health sensor data, meteorological sensor data, and energy-management sensor data from a plurality of sensors associated with a plurality of persons;

for each of the sensors, identifying the person associated with the sensor;

determining whether the sensor data are valid based on ownership information contained within the received sensor data;

removing the sensor data determined to be not valid; and

for the sensor data that are valid;

for each person, aggregating the health sensor data from sensors associated with the person, and aggregating the energy-management sensor data from sensors associated with the person;

aggregating the meteorological sensor data from the sensors associated with the plurality of persons;

routing the aggregated health sensor data for each person to a health monitoring sensor-application-service provider associated with the respective person;

routing the aggregated energy-management sensor data for each person to an energy-management monitoring sensor-application-service provider associated with the respective person; and

routing the aggregated meteorological data for the plurality of persons to a meteorological monitoring sensor-application-service provider.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the sensor data are further associated with a plurality of properties.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the sensor data are further associated with a plurality of sensor communities.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein one or more primary software processes associated with the person perform the validation, aggregation, and routing.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein one or more secondary software processes are also associated with the person, the secondary software processes providing one or more sensor-brokering services, property-coordination services, community-coordination services, personal-portal services, accounting services, entity-management services, entity-modeling services, or policing services.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein one or more third-party software processes utilizing a service framework and application programming interface (API) extend the primary and secondary software processes.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the primary, secondary, and third-party processes are independent threads of control.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the primary, secondary, and third-party processes are distributed across a plurality of networked computing platforms in a unified computing system (UCS) environment.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein adapting the sensor data for communication to the sensor application provider comprises adapting the sensor data from a first data format supported by the community based sensor coordination entity to a second data format supported by the application provider.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein one or more of the sensors are mobile sources.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein one or more of the mobile sources are smartphones associated with persons.

12. The method of claim 10, wherein some of the sensor data from the mobile sources are received over Short Message Service (SMS).

13. The method of claim 10, wherein the sensor data from the mobile sources comprise mobile-source preamble information, the mobile-source preamble information comprising:

caller identification (ID) information identifying the mobile source or the person;

sensor type information identifying a sensor type of each sensor that generated a portion of the sensor data; and

sensor ID information identifying each sensor that generated a portion of the sensor data.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein one or more of the sensors are fixed sources.

15. One or more computer-readable non-transitory storage media embodying logic operable when executed to:

receive health sensor data, meteorological sensor data, and energy-management sensor data from a plurality of sensors associated with a plurality of persons;

for each of the sensors, identify the person associated with the sensor;

determine whether the sensor data are valid based on ownership information contained within the received sensor data;

remove the sensor data determined to be not valid; and

for the sensor data that are valid;

for each person, aggregate the health sensor data from sensors associated with the person, and aggregate the energy-management sensor data from sensors associated with the person;

aggregate the meteorological sensor data from the sensors associated with the plurality of persons;

route the aggregated health sensor data for each person to a health monitoring sensor-application-service provider associated with the respective person;

route the aggregated energy-management sensor data for each person to an energy-management monitoring sensor-application-service provider associated with the respective person; and

route the aggregated meteorological data for the plurality of persons to a meteorological monitoring sensor-application-service provider.

16. The media of claim 15, wherein the sensor data are further associated with a plurality of properties.

17. The media of claim 15, wherein the sensor data are further associated with a plurality of sensor communities.

18. The media of claim 15, wherein one or more primary software processes associated with the person perform the validation, aggregation, and routing.

19. The media of claim 18, wherein one or more secondary software processes are also associated with the person, the secondary software processes providing one or more sensor-brokering services, property-coordination services, community-coordination services, personal-portal services, accounting services, entity-management services, entity-modeling services, or policing services.

20. The media of claim 19, wherein one or more third-party software processes utilizing a service framework and application programming interface (API) extend the primary and secondary software processes.

21. The media of claim 20, wherein the primary, secondary, and third-party processes are independent threads of control.

22. The media of claim 21, wherein the primary, secondary, and third-party processes are distributed across a plurality of networked computing platforms in a unified computing system (UCS) environment.

23. The media of claim 15, wherein adapting the sensor data for communication to the sensor application provider comprises adapting the sensor data from a first data format supported by the community based sensor coordination entity to a second data format supported by the application provider.

24. The media of claim 15, wherein one or more of the sensors are mobile sources.

25. The media of claim 24, wherein one or more of the mobile sources are smartphones associated with persons.

26. The media of claim 24, wherein some of the sensor data from the mobile sources are received over Short Message Service (SMS).

27. The media of claim 24, wherein the sensor data from the mobile sources comprise mobile-source preamble information, the mobile-source preamble information comprising:

caller identification (ID) information identifying the mobile source or the person;

sensor type information identifying a sensor type of each sensor that generated a portion of the sensor data; and

sensor ID information identifying each sensor that generated a portion of the sensor data.

28. The media of claim 15, wherein one or more of the sensors are fixed sources.

29. An apparatus comprising:

one or more communication interfaces;

one or more memory devices containing one or more instructions for execution by one or more processing devices; and

the processing devices, operable when executing the instructions to;

receive health sensor data, meteorological sensor data, and energy-management sensor data from a plurality of sensors associated with a plurality of persons;

for each of the sensors, identify the person associated with the sensor;

determine whether the sensor data are valid based on ownership information contained within the received sensor data;

remove the sensor data determined to be not valid; and

for the sensor data that are valid;

for each person, aggregate the health sensor data from sensors associated with the person, and aggregate the energy-management sensor data from sensors associated with the person;

aggregate the meteorological sensor data from the sensors associated with the plurality of persons;

route the aggregated health sensor data for each person to a health monitoring sensor-application-service provider associated with the respective person;

route the aggregated energy-management sensor data for each person to an energy-management monitoring sensor-application-service provider associated with the respective person; and

route the aggregated meteorological data for the plurality of persons to a meteorological monitoring sensor-application-service provider.

30. The apparatus of claim 29, wherein the sensor data are further associated with a plurality of properties.

31. The apparatus of claim 29, wherein the sensor data are further associated with a plurality of sensor communities.

32. The apparatus of claim 29, wherein one or more primary software processes associated with the person perform the validation, aggregation, and routing.

33. The apparatus of claim 32, wherein one or more secondary software processes are also associated with the person, the secondary software processes providing one or more sensor-brokering services, property-coordination services, community-coordination services, personal-portal services, accounting services, entity-management services, entity-modeling services, or policing services.

34. The apparatus of claim 33, wherein one or more third-party software processes utilizing a service framework and application programming interface (API) extend the primary and secondary software processes.

35. The apparatus of claim 34, wherein the primary, secondary, and third-party processes are independent threads of control.

36. The apparatus of claim 35, wherein the primary, secondary, and third-party processes are distributed across a plurality of networked computing platforms in a unified computing system (UCS) environment.

37. The apparatus of claim 29, wherein adapting the sensor data for communication to the sensor application provider comprises adapting the sensor data from a first data format supported by the community based sensor coordination entity to a second data format supported by the application provider.

38. The apparatus of claim 29, wherein one or more of the sensors are mobile sources.

39. The apparatus of claim 38, wherein one or more of the mobile sources are smartphones associated with persons.

40. The apparatus of claim 38, wherein some of the sensor data from the mobile sources are received over Short Message Service (SMS).

41. The apparatus of claim 38, wherein the sensor data from the mobile sources comprise mobile-source preamble information, the mobile-source preamble information comprising:

caller identification (ID) information identifying the mobile source or the person;

sensor type information identifying a sensor type of each sensor that generated a portion of the sensor data; and

sensor ID information identifying each sensor that generated a portion of the sensor data.

42. The apparatus of claim 29, wherein one or more of the sensors are fixed sources.