Telephonic communications – Supervisory or control line signaling
Reexamination Certificate
2002-04-25
2004-07-20
Barnie, Rexford (Department: 2643)
Telephonic communications
Supervisory or control line signaling
C379S009030, C379S112010
Reexamination Certificate
active
06766016
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a supervisory control system, and in particular to a supervisory control system where an upper supervisory control terminal supervises and controls transmitting devices.
In a supervisory control system where an upper supervisory control terminal (OPS) and a plurality of transmitting devices (NE's) communicate with LAN, DCC, or the like, it is required that an operator on the side of the upper supervisory control terminal recognizes states of the transmitting devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
Following two systems have been previously used for a system where an upper supervisory control terminal supervises transmitting devices through communication lines.
(1) As shown in
FIG. 32
, this is a system where when two transmitting devices NE
1
and NE
2
, for example, are connected to an upper supervisory control terminal OPS with a communication line, the transmitting device NE
1
sequentially notifies to the upper supervisory control terminal OPS state changes, i.e. a generation of an alarm A (
501
), a generation of an alarm B (
502
), a generation of an alarm C (
503
), a recovery of the alarm C (
504
), and a recovery of the alarm A (
505
). Similarly, the transmitting device NE
2
sequentially notifies to the upper supervisory control terminal OPS a generation of an alarm D (
506
) and a generation of an alarm E (
507
). Namely, in such a supervisory control system, every time a state change occurs, the transmitting device issues a notification of the state change to the upper supervisory control terminal OPS in real time.
(2) As shown in
FIG. 33
, this is a system where the upper supervisory control terminal OPS reads the respective states of the transmitting devices NE
1
and NE
2
. First, the upper supervisory control terminal OPS issues an alarm read (
601
) to the transmitting devices NE
1
and NE
2
. In response, the transmitting device NE
1
issues a notification (
602
) indicating that there is no alarm presently generated to the upper supervisory control terminal OPS. The transmitting device NE
2
issues a notification (
603
) indicating that alarms D and E are being generated to the upper supervisory control terminal OPS.
Then, in the transmitting device NE
1
, a generation of an alarm A (
604
), a generation of an alarm B (
605
), a generation of an alarm C (
606
), a recovery of the alarm C (
607
), and a recovery of the alarm A (
608
) occur in the form of state changes. In the transmitting device NE
2
, a recovery of the alarm D (
611
) occurs in the form of a state change.
Hereafter, when an alarm read (
609
) is provided to the transmitting devices NE
1
and NE
2
from the upper supervisory control terminal OPS, a notification (
610
) indicating that the alarm B is being generated is issued from the transmitting device NE
1
to the upper supervisory control terminal OPS, and a notification (
612
) indicating that the alarm E is being generated is issued from the transmitting device NE
2
to the upper supervisory control terminal OPS.
Thus, a state read command is transmitted to the transmitting devices as required from the upper supervisory control terminal, and the transmitting device having received the read command notifies its own state change.
However, there were respective problems as follows in such prior art:
(1) When an alarm generation and an alarm recovery are repeated for a short time, so that many notifications (telegrams) frequently arise from the transmitting devices, the communication between the transmitting devices and the upper supervisory control terminal is congested.
(2) Faults generated may not be dealt with such that the upper supervisory control terminal can recognize only a present state of the transmitting devices at the time of reading, and an operator neither can determine whether or not the state of the transmitting devices has been changed in the meantime, nor can recognize alarms generated and recovered particularly before reading the state.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is accordingly an object of the present invention to provide a supervisory control system where an upper supervisory control terminal supervises and controls transmitting devices, a congestion state of a communication line is reduced, and a state change having occurred can be accurately notified to the upper supervisory control terminal.
[1] In order to achieve the above-mentioned object, in a supervisory control system of claim
1
according to the present invention, an upper supervisory control terminal has two supervisory states, transmitting devices store state change information to be transmitted to the upper supervisory control terminal when the upper supervisory control terminal is in one supervisory state, and merge the state change information into a single message to be transmitted when the upper supervisory control terminal shifts to the other supervisory state.
Namely, in the present invention, an upper supervisory control terminal has a switchover function of supervisory states, and transitions between two supervisory states of a real time supervision and a non-real time supervision according to a supervisory state of an operator.
A transmitting device has a state (issue state) of notifying a state change in real time, and a state (issue suppression state) of not notifying a state change. Each transmitting device has a function of storing state changes during an issue suppression state period and of merging the stored state changes into a single message to be notified to the upper supervisory control terminal.
Such a technical concept will be described referring to an arrangement and an operation example of FIG.
1
.
It is hereby supposed that an operator is located on the side of an upper supervisory control terminal OPS, and e.g. five transmitting devices NE
1
-NE
5
are connected, through communication lines, to the upper supervisory control terminal OPS.
The upper supervisory control terminal OPS is firstly in the real time supervisory state, and supervises states (
101
-
105
) of the transmitting devices NE
1
-NE
5
. In the example of
FIG. 1
, the transmitting device NE
1
is in a state (
101
) of no alarm being generated (no alarm generation). The transmitting device NE
2
is similarly in a state (
102
) of no alarm generation. Also, the transmitting device NE
3
is in a state (
103
) of an alarm F being generated (continuing alarm). The transmitting device NE
4
is in a state (
104
) of continuing alarms G and H. The transmitting device NE
5
is in a state (
106
) of no alarm generation.
If the operator performs a switchover (
106
) to the non-real time supervisory state with respect to the upper supervisory control terminal OPS, the upper supervisory control terminal OPS performs a suppression setting (
107
) of a state change notification to all of the transmitting devices NE
1
-NE
5
to be supervised concurrently with the switchover (
106
) (claim
2
).
Until the operator again executes a switchover (
118
) in order to perform the real time supervision and the upper supervisory control terminal OPS executes a suppression release (
119
), the transmitting devices NE
1
-NE
5
preliminarily store the state changes respectively in e.g. a database.
Namely, in the example of
FIG. 1
, only notifications (
108
,
110
, and
109
) of the first state changes can be performed after the issue suppression (
107
) is set in the transmitting devices NE
1
-NE
5
, and the following state changes are stored in the database or the like (claim
3
).
After the generation of the alarm A is notified (
108
) in the transmitting device NE
1
, as shown by a state change {circle around (1)} of a dotted line part, a generation (
111
) of an alarm B, a generation (
112
) of an alarm C, a recovery (
113
) of the alarm C, and a recovery (
114
) of the alarm A are stored in the database or the like. Also in the transmitting device NE
2
, after a generation of an alarm D is notified (
110
), as shown by a state change {circle around (2)} of the dotted line part,
Kojima Susumu
Todokoro Gaku
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