Method and apparatus for engaging in a service or activity using an ad-hoc mesh network

• US 9,055,105 B2
• Filed: 05/29/2009
• Issued: 06/09/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 05/29/2009
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Nokia Technologies Oy (Nokia Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Nokia Technologies Oy (Nokia Corporation)
• Inventors: Leppanen, Kari J., Turunen, Markku T., Virtanen, Sami, Tirronen, Mikko, Kasslin, Mika
• Primary Examiner(s): KELLEY, STEVEN SHAUN
• Application Number:
  US12/475,430
• Publication Number:
  US 20100304759A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,202 Days
• Field of Search: 455/456.2
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/0421 Anonymous communication, i.e. the party's identifiers are hidden from the other party or parties, e.g. using an anonymizer
• 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 67/51 Discovery or management thereof, e.g. service location protocol [SLP] or web services
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/52 specially adapted for the location of the user terminal
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/54 Presence management, e.g. monitoring or registration for receipt of user log-on information, or the connection status of the users
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/22 Parsing or analysis of headers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/32 Architecture of open systems interconnection [OSI] 7-layer type protocol stacks, e.g. the interfaces between the data link level and the physical level
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/325 in the network layer [OSI layer 3], e.g. X.25 H04L69/16 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/72454 according to context-related or environment-related conditions
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/72457 according to geographic location
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/02 Services making use of location information
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/023 using mutual or relative location information between multiple location based services [LBS] targets or of distance thresholds
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/20 Services signaling; Auxiliary data signalling, i.e. transmitting data via a non-traffic channel
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 40/023 Limited or focused flooding to selected areas of a network
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 84/18 Self-organising networks, e.g. ad-hoc networks or sensor networks
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 30/70 in wireless communication networks

Abstract

An approach is provided for discovering a location-based service over an ad-hoc mesh network. A location-based service is discovered sending an anonymous flooding message including a query over the ad-hoc mesh network. A wireless node replies to the flooding message over the ad-hoc mesh network with a pointer to the discovered location-based service.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

discovering local information by broadcasting an anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message including a query over a wireless ad-hoc mesh network without the use of internet protocols; and

receiving a reply to the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message from a wireless node, which receives the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message, over the ad-hoc mesh network without the use of internet protocols, wherein

the wireless node receiving the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message includes a message table containing flooding messages the wireless node has scheduled to be transmitted,

the message table is updated to include the received anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message that the wireless node has scheduled to be transmitted, each entry in the message table contains the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message, the time when the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message is scheduled to be sent, and a number of receptions of a same anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message by the wireless node,

the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message is removed from the message table at a time a maximum number of receptions of the same anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message is reached,

the reply includes a pointer or small-volume data related to the discovered local information,

the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message is transmitted to the neighboring nodes in connectionless manner without the need to send any prior control signals or messages to the neighboring nodes before the transmission or without knowledge of the addresses of the neighboring nodes, and

the neighboring nodes to which the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message is transmitted include one or more nodes that are different from node from which the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message is received.

2. A method of claim 1, wherein the a network layer identification associated with the wireless node is periodically changed.

3. A method of claim 1, wherein each beaconing period of a device-to-device radio layer of the wireless node is on an order of hundreds of milliseconds and each awake period of the device-to-device radio layer of the wireless node is only a few milliseconds.

4. A method of claim 1, wherein the reply to the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message from the wireless node is used by the wireless node to identify active communities within a neighborhood and to update a list of visible community members in the neighborhood.

5. A method of claim 1, further comprising:

generating the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message to include one or more anonymized community identifiers,

wherein the one or more anonymized community identifiers specify the respective communities to which the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message is directed.

6. A method comprising:

receiving at a wireless node, without the use of internet protocols, an anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message including a query for discovering local information over an ad-hoc mesh network; and

initiating transmission of a reply to the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message without the use of internet protocols, wherein

the wireless node receiving the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message includes a message table containing flooding messages the wireless node has scheduled to be transmitted,

the message table is updated to include the received anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message that the wireless node has scheduled to be transmitted,

each entry in the message table contains the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message, the time when the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message is scheduled to be sent, and a number of receptions of a same anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message by the wireless node,

the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message is removed from the message table at a time a maximum number of receptions of the same anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message is reached,

the reply includes a pointer or small-volume data related to the discovered local information,

the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message is transmitted to neighboring nodes in connectionless manner without the need to send any prior control signals or messages to the neighboring nodes before the transmission or without knowledge of the addresses of the neighboring nodes, and

the neighboring nodes to which the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message is transmitted include one or more nodes that are different from node from which the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message is received.

7. A method of claim 6, further comprising:

filtering the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message by comparing a set of anonymized community identifiers stored in a replying wireless node against one or more anonymized community identifiers included in the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message,

wherein a replying wireless node in the ad-hoc network contains a set of anonymized community identifiers corresponding respectively to each community to which the wireless node belongs.

8. A method of claim 6, further comprising:

determining whether a wireless node contains or has access to the queried local information; and

initiating transmission of the reply based on the determination,

wherein personal information in the reply is anonymized.

9. A method of claim 6, wherein the local information is location indication data, an indication of a location event, an indication of location-based service matching the query, or a combination thereof.

10. A wireless node comprising:

at least one processor; and

at least one memory including computer program code,

the at least one memory and the computer program code configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the wireless node to perform at least the following,

receive at the wireless node, without the use of internet protocols, an anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message including a query for discovering local information over an ad-hoc mesh network, and

initiate transmission of a reply to the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message without the use of internet protocols, wherein

the wireless node that receives the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message includes a message table containing flooding messages the wireless node has scheduled to be transmitted,

the message table is updated to include the received anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message that the wireless node has scheduled to be transmitted,

each entry in the message table contains the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message, the time when the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message is scheduled to be sent, and a number of receptions of a same anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message by the wireless node,

the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message is removed from the message table at a time a maximum number of receptions of the same anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message is reached,

the reply includes a pointer or small-volume data related to the discovered local information,

the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message is transmitted to the neighboring nodes in connectionless manner without the need to send any prior control signals or messages to the neighboring nodes before the transmission or without knowledge of the addresses of the neighboring nodes, and

the neighboring nodes to which the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message is transmitted include one or more nodes that are different from node from which the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message is received.

11. A wireless node of claim 10, wherein a network layer identification associated with the wireless node is periodically changed.

12. A wireless node of claim 10, wherein each beaconing period of a device-to-device radio layer of the wireless node is on an order of hundreds of milliseconds and each awake period of the device-to-device radio layer of the wireless node is only a few milliseconds.

13. A wireless node of claim 10, wherein the reply to the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message from the wireless node is used by the wireless node to identify active communities within a neighborhood and to update a list of visible community members in the neighborhood.

14. A wireless node of claim 10, wherein the wireless node is further caused to:

generate the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message to include one or more anonymized community identifiers,

wherein the one or more anonymized community identifier specify the respective communities to which the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message is directed.

15. A wireless node of claim 10, wherein the the wireless node is a mobile phone further comprising:

user interface circuitry and user interface software configured to facilitate user control of at least some functions of the mobile phone through use of a display and configured to respond to user input; and

a display and display circuitry configured to display at least a portion of a user interface of the mobile phone, the display and display circuitry configured to facilitate user control of at least some functions of the mobile phone.

16. A wireless node of claim 15, wherein the mobile phone includes a radio for device-to-device communication over the ad-hoc mesh network.

17. A wireless node of claim 10, wherein the wireless node is further caused to:

filter the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message by comparing a set of anonymized community identifiers stored in a replying wireless node against one or more anonymized community identifiers included in the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message,

wherein a replying wireless node in the ad-hoc network contains a set of anonymized community identifiers corresponding respectively to each community to which the wireless node belongs.

18. A wireless node of claim 10, wherein the wireless node is further caused to:

determine whether the wireless node contains or has access to information relevant to the queried local information; and

initiate transmission of the reply based on the determination.

19. A wireless node of claim 10, wherein the local information is location indication data, an indication of a location event, an indication of location-based service matching the query, or a combination thereof.

20. A wireless node of claim 10,

wherein the wireless node includes a community layer, a cognition layer, and a network layer connected between an application and a device to device radio layer, and

wherein the community layer is connected between the cognition layer, which is a higher layer than the community layer, and the network layer, which is a lower layer than the community layer.

21. A wireless node of claim 20, wherein the cognition layer includes a control logic and a storage, and the reply is automatically stored in the storage.

22. A wireless node of claim 10, wherein the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message does not include a true identify of a sender of the anonymous propagating multi-hop flooding message.