COMMUNICATION APPARATUS

• US 20120242461A1
• Filed: 03/23/2012
• Published: 09/27/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 03/25/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba (Toshiba Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba (Toshiba Corporation)
• Inventors: ISE, Kotaro, KOGAWA, Tsuyoshi, ISHIHARA, Takeshi, TANIZAWA, Yoshimichi, KAMAGATA, Eiji, OYAMA, Yuichiro, MURAKAMI, Takaomi
• Granted Patent: US 9,054,890 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 340/12.5
• CPC Class Codes: G08C 2201/20 Binding and programming of remote control devices
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/2816 Controlling appliance services of a home automation network by calling their functionalities arrangements in telecontrol or telemetry systems for selectively calling a substation from a main station; in which substation desired apparatus is selected for applying a control signal thereto or for obtaining measured values therefrom H04Q9/00

Abstract

According to an embodiment, a communication apparatus controls controllable nodes. The apparatus includes an acquisition unit and a generation unit. The acquisition unit acquires at least one of a first evaluation value indicating an occurrence frequency of a control request to a target controllable node and a second evaluation value indicating an occurrence frequency of communication error at the target controllable node. The generation unit generates identification information to be assigned to control the target controllable node in a manner such that a bit length of the identification information becomes shorter as at least one of the first evaluation value and the second evaluation value increases.

Claims

1. A communication apparatus controlling a plurality of controllable nodes including a target controllable node, comprising:

an acquisition unit configured to acquire at least one of a first evaluation value indicating an occurrence frequency of a control request to the target controllable node and a second evaluation value indicating an occurrence frequency of communication error at the target controllable node; and

a generation unit configured to generate identification information to be assigned to control the target controllable node in a manner such that a bit length of the identification information becomes shorter as at least one of the first evaluation value and the second evaluation value increases.

2. The apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the generation unit performs Huffman coding based on at least one of the first evaluation value and the second evaluation value to generate the identification information.

3. The apparatus according to claim 2, wherein the generation unit performs the Huffman coding by adopting N-ary Huffman tree, where N is an integer greater than 2.

4. The apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising a transmission unit configured to transmit a control request signal including the identification information to the target controllable node.

5. The apparatus according to claim 4, wherein the transmission unit adds a parity bit to the identification information.

6. The apparatus according to claim 5, wherein the transmission unit interleaves the identification information in a unit, the longer the bit length of the identification information, the smaller the unit, the parity bit is added for each interleaved bit group.

7. The apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the first evaluation value is evaluated based on at least one of number of times the target controllable node was activated in past and node type information of the target controllable node.

8. The apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the second evaluation value is evaluated based on at least one of:

(a) number of times a communication error occurred in past at the target controllable node;

(b) radio signal intensity information at the target controllable node; and

(c) physical position information of the target controllable node.

9. A communication apparatus controlling a plurality of controllable nodes including a target controllable node, comprising:

a measurement unit configured to measure controllable radio signal intensity which indicates minimum radio signal intensity at which a wireless signal reaches for each of the plurality of controllable nodes;

a control unit configured to assign finite number of identification information to each of the plurality of controllable nodes in ascending or descending order of the controllable radio signal intensity, allowing reuse of the identification information; and

a transmission unit configured to;

(A) transmit, if a group of controllable nodes to which target identification information identical to the identification information of the target controllable node is assigned and whose controllable radio signal intensity is smaller than that of the target controllable node exists, a disregard request signal to request to disregard a control request signal whose destination is the target identification information in accordance with maximum controllable radio signal intensity of the group of controllable nodes, a destination of the disregard request signal being the target identification information; and

(B) transmit the control request signal in accordance with the controllable radio signal intensity of the target controllable node after (A), the destination of the control request signal being the target identification information.

10. The apparatus according to claim 9, wherein the disregard request signal includes one of information indicating:

(a) a period of time to disregard the control request signal;

(b) number of times to disregard the control request signal;

or (c) a type of control command of the control request signal to be disregarded.