Communications: electrical – Selective – Interrogation response
Reexamination Certificate
1998-11-09
2001-05-29
Holloway, III, Edwin C. (Department: 2635)
Communications: electrical
Selective
Interrogation response
C340S870030, C340S870030, C370S311000, C455S343200
Reexamination Certificate
active
06239690
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of battery economising in a communications system, a communications system, a transmitting station for use in the system and to a receiving station for use in the system. The communications system may comprise a telecommunications system such as a paging or cordless/cellular telephone system or telemetry system used for example in say an automatic meter reading system.
2. Description of the Related Art
In many telecommunications and telemetry applications, equipments are on standby for extended periods of times, for example months if not years. Consequently for battery powered equipments, any means of extending the useful life of a battery power source is of importance. For radio equipments the receiver is often the dominant source of power consumption within the equipment.
Power saving in receivers of radio equipments is known for example in the digital paging field. For example the POCSAG (or CCIR Radiopaging Code No. 1) has an inherent power saving capability because under the protocol time is divided into successive time periods called batches. A batch comprises a sync code word and 8 frames. A receiver is powered for receipt of a sync code word and for a predesignated one of eight frames in successive batches, any messages for the receiver being transmitted in the predesignated frame. During the time periods between the sync code word and the predesignated frame and vice versa, the receiver can be powered down.
EP-B1-0 554 941 discloses the option of a paging system controller transmitting address or receiver identity codes (RICs) in an order of increasing or decreasing numerical significance and if a pager notes from the first few bits of an address being received that it follows after its address in the ordered sequence and therefore there is not a call or message for itself, the receiver section of the pager is powered down before the end of the frame in order to save power.
WO 90/06634 discloses the concept of a portable receiver receiving a 32 bit sync code word and checking the sync code word in 2 parts, firstly the first 8 bits and secondly the last 24 bits. If the first part is received having less than two bit errors, the sync code word is considered detected and power control means in the portable receiver powers down the receiving stage for the duration of the second part. If the result is not acceptable, the receiver remains energised for the remaining 24 bits of the sync code word and the result is accepted if there are less than 3 errors in the remaining 24 bits.
This citation also mentions power conservation by disabling the receiving stage or operating a microcomputer in the portable receiver in a low power mode, or by doing both.
Paging systems are structured in that the air interface protocol determines, once the pagers are synchronised, when the receivers should be energised or not. However there are other applications such as telemetry as applied to for example automatic meter reading systems where transceivers coupled to metering units are required to transmit parcels of data in response to the receipt of an infrequently given request. In the interests of power saving the transceivers have to be controlled to minimise the energisation of the receivers whilst ensuring that a prompt response can be given to an interrogation signal.
OBJECT AND SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
An object of the present invention is to facilitate power saving in communications apparatus which are on standby for long time periods.
According to one aspect of the present invention there is provided a method of battery economising in a communications system comprising a transmitting station and a receiving station having a radio identity code consisting of M bits, characterised by transmitting a wake-up message comprising at least two repetitions of a wake-up sequence, the wake-up sequence comprising N concatenated parts, where N is an integer, each of said N parts including a sync code word and a different fraction M/N of bits of a radio identity code, by energising the receiving station intermittently in order to detect at least one of said parts, by the receiving station remaining energised and analysing said at least one of said parts, and by de-energising the receiving station in response to determining that the received bits of the radio identity code do not correspond to the corresponding bits of the receiving station's radio identity code.
According to a second aspect of the present invention there is provided a communications system comprising a transmitting station and a receiving station having a radio identity code consisting of M bits, characterised in that the transmitting station has means for transmitting a wake-up message comprising at least two repetitions of a wake-up sequence, the wake-up sequence comprising N concatenated parts, where N is an integer, each of said N parts including a sync code word and a different fraction M/N of bits of a radio identity code, the receiving station has means for intermittently energising its receiver in order to detect at least one of said parts, for remaining energised and for analysing said at least one of said parts, and for de-energising the receiving station in response to determining that the received bits of the radio identity code do not correspond to the corresponding bits of the receiving station's radio identity code.
According to a third aspect of the present invention there is provided a transmitting station for use in a communications system including a receiving station having a radio identity code consisting of M bits, characterised in that the transmitting station has means for transmitting a wake-up message comprising at least two repetitions of a wake-up sequence, the wake-up sequence comprising N concatenated parts, where N is an integer, each of said N parts including a sync code word and a different fraction M/N of bits of a radio identity code.
According to a fourth aspect of the present invention there is provided a receiving station for use in a communications system comprising a transmitting station and the receiving station, said receiving station having a radio identity code consisting of M bits, wherein the transmitting station has means for transmitting a wake-up message comprising at least two repetitions of a wake-up sequence, the wake-up sequence comprising N concatenated parts, where N is an integer, each of said N parts including a sync code word and a different fraction M/N of bits of a radio identity code, characterised in that the receiving station has radio identity code detecting means and means for intermittently energising its receiver in order to detect at least one of said parts, for remaining energised whilst said at least one of said parts is being analysed by said radio identity code detecting means, and for de-energising the receiving station in response to determining that the received bits of the radio identity code do not correspond to the corresponding bits of the receiving station's radio identity code.
In order to maximise the chance that a receiving station may reject a radio identity code after receiving one of the parts of a wake-up sequence, the bits of the radio identity code are randomised prior to fractionalising.
In an embodiment of the present invention the bits of the radio identity code are randomised by applying the bits to stages of a linear feedback shift register with a generator polynomial for generating an M-sequence, clocking the shift register a predetermined number of times, and reading-out the new contents of the shift register. By using a linear feedback shift register with a generator polynomial for randomising the bits of the radio identity code, a high degree of randomisation is achieved. Furthermore a unique mapping of the radio identity code is obtained. In operation of the shift register the number of times that the shift register is clocked corresponds to at least the number of bits in the radio identity code thereby ensuring that every bit
Burbidge Richard C.
Gibson Rodney W.
Jamieson Philip A.
Roberts David K.
Holloway III Edwin C.
Slobod Jack D.
U.S. Philips Corporation
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