Telephonic communications – Having light wave or ultrasonic link for speech or paging... – Including fiber optic link within telephone network
Patent
1995-06-02
1997-11-04
Bost, Dwayne
Telephonic communications
Having light wave or ultrasonic link for speech or paging...
Including fiber optic link within telephone network
379 49, 379 63, 370312, 370390, 455 542, 455 561, H04M 1100, H04J 316, H04B 100, H04Q 700
Patent
active
056848609
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
The present invention concerns an apparatus for automatically handling and distributing service requests, by means of data and voice communications, between a plurality of users and a fleet composed by a plurality of mobile stations through a central sorting station. Reference will be made hereafter to the application of the present apparatus to the handling of taxi calls. It is apparent that the same apparatus may be used, with small changes, for similar applications such as the handling of ambulance calls, home collection/delivery calls and the like.
As it is known, there are essentially three ways to ask for a taxi run:
The most efficient way is the radio-taxi service, consisting in a central station which receives the phone calls from the users and contacts, by radio, a fleet of taxis each one provided with a radio transceiver device. The taxi drivers interested in taking the call communicate to the central station their estimated time of arrival to the requested address. The central station operator chooses the nearest one he was able to hear and communicates to the user his name and estimated time of arrival.
This way of operation has various drawbacks of different nature. From an economical point of view, it requires several operators usually working 24 hours a day in two- or three-hour shifts, therefore implying a quite high personnel cost. Moreover, from a safety point of view, the drivers are continuously distracted by the calls from the central station, with the possible dangerous consequences deriving therefrom.
As to the efficiency of the procedure, the driver proposing himself for the call presumes to be the nearest to the user, but this is not always true since each driver does not know the positions of the other taxis. Furthermore, possible misunderstandings about the address may occur between the user and the operator of the central station, or between the operator and the drivers listening to the call. Also, this procedure does not assure a correct distribution of the calls among the taxis, since a driver may intentionally "cheat" on his position to take more calls than his colleagues, or he may illegally increase the power output of his radio so as to overcome the transmissions of the other drivers.
Examples are already known of an apparatus for automatically handling and distributing service requests, by means of data and voice communications, between a plurality of users and a fleet composed by a plurality of mobile stations through a central sorting station, said examples being given in EP-A-0.235.498 and JP-A-3.151.754. This type of apparatus preferably includes a mobile station position monitoring system like the one disclosed in JP-A-4.229.397.
Nonetheless, the greatest obstacle to the wide diffusion of such an apparatus is the limited number of mobile stations which can be managed by each radio channel, i.e. the great number of channels required for a large fleet. The efficiency of the apparatus, and therefore its usefulness, mainly rest on the efficient exploitation of the available radio frequencies, but this problem has not been dealt with in the above-mentioned prior art documents.
Therefore, the object of the present invention is to provide an apparatus for automatically handling and distributing the calls which is capable of overcoming the above-mentioned drawbacks.
This object is achieved by means of an apparatus according to claim 1.
A first apparent advantage of the apparatus according to the present invention is the great reduction in the cost of each mobile station not requiring a very stable, expensive and sophisticated high-precision clock.
A second advantage of the present apparatus is the great increase in efficiency stemming from a much more efficient use of the radio channels achieved by frequently synchronizing the mobile stations with the central station by means of a signal continuously broadcast by the central station.
Another advantage of this apparatus is that the central station usually communicates only with a single mobile station at a time, so that the o
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"A Taxi Communication System"; Proceedings of the 29th Vehicular Technology Conference (27 Mar. 1979); pp. 307-308.
"Computer-Aided New Dispatch System For The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department"; Proceedings of the 1980 Carnahan Conference on Crime Countermeasures (14 May 1980); pp. 39-45.
Milani Carlo
Moretto Gianantonio
Bost Dwayne
Richardson Scott
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