Antenna system with individually addressable elements in dense array

• US 9,538,253 B2
• Filed: 07/09/2014
• Issued: 01/03/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 11/18/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Charter Communications Operating LLC (Charter Communications Incorporated)
• Original Assignee: RPX Corporation
• Inventors: Kanojia, Chaitanya, Lipowski, Joseph Thaddeus
• Primary Examiner(s): Gesesse, Tilahun B
• Application Number:
  US14/327,055
• Publication Number:
  US 20140320748A1
• Time in Patent Office: 909 Days
• Field of Search: 455/3.01, 455/3.06, 455/3.05, 455/3.04, 725/131
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: H04H 20/57 for mobile receivers
• CPC Class Codes: H04H 60/51 of receiving stations
• CPC Class Codes: H04H 60/70 using geographical information, e.g. maps, charts or atlases
• CPC Class Codes: H04H 60/82 the transmission system being the Internet
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/40 using video transcoding, i.e. partial or full decoding of a coded input stream followed by re-encoding of the decoded output stream
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2143 located in a single building, e.g. hotel, hospital or museum arrangements specially adapted for plural spots in a confined site in broadcast systems H04H20/63; adaptations for transmission by electric cable for domestic distribution in television systems H04N7/106
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2181 comprising remotely distributed storage units, e.g. when movies are replicated over a plurality of video servers distributed storage of data in networks, e.g. transport arrangements for network file system [NFS], storage area networks [SAN] or network attached storage [NAS], H04L67/1097
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2221 being a cable television head-end CATV in broadcast systems H04H20/78
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2335 involving reformatting operations of audio signals, e.g. by converting from one coding standard to another details of audio signal transcoding G10L19/173
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2393 involving handling client requests scheduling or organising the servicing of application requests H04L67/60
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/25841 involving the geographical location of the client retrieval from the Internet by querying based on geographical locations G06F16/9537; arrangements for identifying locations of receiving stations in broadcast systems H04H60/51; location of the user terminal in data switching networks H04L67/52; services making use of the location of users or terminals in wireless networks H04W4/02; locating users or terminals in wireless networks H04W64/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/25866 Management of end-user data customer care in data networks H04L41/5077
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2747 Remote storage of video programs received via the downstream path, e.g. from the server
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4126 The peripheral being portable, e.g. PDAs or mobile phones
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/41407 embedded in a portable device, e.g. video client on a mobile phone, PDA, laptop constructional details of equipment or arrangements specially adapted for portable computer application G06F1/1626; arrangements specially adapted for mobile receivers in broadcast systems H04H20/57
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4341 Demultiplexing of audio and video streams
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4347 Demultiplexing of several video streams
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/43637 involving a wireless protocol, e.g. Bluetooth, RF or wireless LAN [IEEE 802.11] arrangements for wireless networking or broadcasting of information in indoor or near-field type systems H04B10/114
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/6112 involving terrestrial transmission, e.g. DVB-T
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/6175 involving transmission via Internet broadcast-related systems characterised by the transmission system being the Internet H04H60/82
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/455 : Demodulation-circuits

Abstract

A method and system for capturing, storing, and streaming over the air broadcasts based on user requests is disclosed. The system and method utilize subarrays of antenna elements for receiving over the air broadcasts. Processing pipelines are used to demodulate, transcode and index the content transmissions to produce content data that are streamed to users. In this way, the feeds from antennas can be accessed by users over a network connection.

Claims

1. An antenna system comprising:

a plurality of circuit boards, each of the circuit boards including a two dimensional array of antenna elements for separately receiving over the air broadcasts and an encoder system for simultaneously demodulating the over air broadcasts received by the separate antenna elements, the encoder system transcoding the over the air broadcasts from MPEG2 content data;

a card cage for housing the circuit boards,

an antenna optimization and control system that determines which of the antenna elements within the antenna array are available and optimized to receive particular over the air broadcasts requested by users and uses those antenna elements to receive over the air broadcasts for those users; and

a data storage system that stores the content data from the encoder system.

2. The system according to claim 1, wherein the two dimensional array of antenna elements has a density of at least 10 antenna elements per square meter.

3. The system according to claim 1, wherein the antenna elements are omni-directional antenna elements.

4. The system according to claim 1, wherein the antenna elements are symmetric dual loop antenna elements.

5. The system according to claim 1, wherein the two dimensional arrays of antenna elements form a three dimensional array within the card cage.

6. The system according to claim 1, wherein each of the encoder systems comprises demodulators that are implemented on each of the circuit boards.

7. The system according to claim 1, further comprising radio frequency tuners on the circuit boards for tuning the antenna elements of the two dimensional array.

8. The system according to claim 1, wherein each of the circuit boards comprises at least 50 antenna elements.

9. The system according to claim 1, wherein the antenna elements are hemispherical directional antenna elements.

10. The system according to claim 1, wherein the antenna optimization and control system determines which of the antenna elements should receive the particular over the air broadcasts by comparing received signal strength indicator values of different antenna elements.

11. A method for receiving over the air broadcasts with an array of antenna elements, the method comprising:

providing two dimensional arrays of antennas elements for receiving the over the air broadcasts;

stacking the arrays to form a three dimensional array of antenna elements;

determining which of the antenna elements within the antenna array are available and optimized to receive particular over the air broadcasts requested by users and using those antenna elements to receive over the air broadcasts for those users;

receiving the over the air broadcasts with the three dimensional array of antenna elements; and

simultaneously demodulating and transcoding the over the air broadcasts received by the antenna elements from MPEG2 content data to be stored in a data storage device.

12. The method according to claim 11, wherein each array of antennas elements has a density of at least 10 antenna elements per square meter.

13. The method according to claim 11, further comprising stacking the two dimensional arrays of antenna elements in a card cage.

14. The method according to claim 11, further comprising implementing tuners for the antenna elements on the circuit boards that also have the two dimensional arrays of antennas elements.

15. The method according to claim 11, further comprising providing at least 50 antenna elements in each of the two dimensional arrays.

16. The method according to claim 11, wherein the antenna elements of the two dimensional arrays of antenna elements have a density of at least 50 antenna elements per square meter.

17. The method according to claim 11, further comprising determining which of the antenna elements should receive the particular over the air broadcasts by comparing received signal strength indicator values of different antenna elements.