Method and system for wireless transmission of quaternions

• US 9,450,681 B1
• Filed: 05/08/2015
• Issued: 09/20/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 05/08/2015
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha (Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Sharp Laboratories of America Incorporated (Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.)
• Inventors: Hallberg, Bryan Severt
• Primary Examiner(s): Jackson, Blane
• Application Number:
  US14/707,194
• Time in Patent Office: 501 Days
• Field of Search: 455/414.1, 455/41.2, 455/574, 455/556.1, 340/8.1, 340/10.1
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/22 Parsing or analysis of headers
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/026 using orientation information, e.g. compass
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 30/70 in wireless communication networks

Abstract

A method and system for low latency, low power, high fidelity wireless transmission of quaternions provides superior performance of real-time applications that transmit and consume quaternions. The method and system provide a quaternion transmission protocol wherein quaternion sources, such as sensor units, construct quaternion update packets containing quaternions encoded in a notation that both conserves bandwidth and preserves angular resolution provided by quaternions. The update packets are transmitted on a wireless communication link to a quaternion destination, such as a data hub, which deconstructs and interprets the update packets.

Claims

1. A system for wireless transmission of quaternions, comprising:

a quaternion source configured to construct a quaternion update packet containing a quaternion at predefined bit positions and in a predefined fixed bit length format specified by a quaternion transmission protocol and transmit the update packet on a wireless communication link; and

a quaternion destination configured to receive the update packet off the wireless link and interpret the update packet, wherein the quaternion is expressed in the update packet in a compressed form.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the fixed bit length format comprises mantissa bit positions and exponent bit positions.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the fixed bit length format further comprises sign bit positions.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the quaternion is encoded in the update packet in a format that provides increasing resolution of values of constituent elements of the quaternion with proximity to +1 and −

1.

5. A system for wireless transmission of quaternions, comprising:

a quaternion source configured to construct a quaternion update packet containing a quaternion at predefined bit positions and in a predefined fixed bit length format specified by a quaternion transmission protocol and transmit the update packet on a wireless communication link; and

a quaternion destination configured to receive the update packet off the wireless link and interpret the update packet, wherein the update packet further contains a quaternion flag at a predefined bit position specified by the quaternion transmission protocol signifying to the quaternion destination that the update packet contains the quaternion at the bit positions and in the fixed bit length format.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein the quaternion is expressed in the update packet as four bit sequences of a common length representing four constituent elements of the quaternion.

7. The system of claim 5, wherein the update packet is transmitted during a time division multiple access (TDMA) time slot assigned to the quaternion source and no other quaternion source.

8. The system of claim 5, wherein the quaternion represents a spatial orientation of the quaternion source.

9. The system of claim 5, wherein the quaternion source is configured to compute the quaternion based on measurements of acceleration, rotation and magnetic field.

10. The system of claim 5, wherein the quaternion source is configured to convert the quaternion into the fixed bit length format.

11. The system of claim 5, wherein the quaternion source comprises a motion sensor unit.

12. The system of claim 5, wherein the quaternion destination comprises a data hub.

13. The system of claim 5, wherein the quaternion destination comprises a client device.

14. A system for wireless transmission of quaternions, comprising:

a quaternion source configured to construct a quaternion update packet containing a quaternion at predefined bit positions and in a predefined fixed bit length format specified by a quaternion transmission protocol and transmit the update packet on a wireless communication link; and

a quaternion destination configured to receive the update packet off the wireless link and interpret the update packet, wherein the quaternion source is configured to receive from the quaternion destination a quaternion acknowledgement packet in response to the update packet and wherein the acknowledgement packet contains timing correction information signifying to the quaternion source a timing correction for a clock on the quaternion source.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the acknowledgement packet contains a sequence number signifying to the quaternion source which update packet is being acknowledged.

16. The system of claim 14, wherein the quaternion source is configured to receive the acknowledgement packet during a time division multiple access (TDMA) time slot assigned to the quaternion source and no other quaternion source.