Variable length data packet with adjustable length indicator

Details Variable length data packet with adjustable length indicator Variable length data packet with adjustable length indicator

2000-04-28

2001-11-06

Williams, Howard L. (Department: 2819)

Coded data generation or conversion

Digital code to digital code converters

C370S471000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06313763

ABSTRACT:

FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a method, especially operable on pervasive devices eg. communications enabled Personal Digital Assistant, mobile phone, remote field sensors/monitor or other mobile devices, for encoding data for minimal length byte streams for transmission over slow/costly networks.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
In traditional client/server computing environments, data items along with their identifiers are transmitted within data streams between computers in respective data packets in one of two ways:
data items are given a fixed length within a data packet according to the maximum required length of a data item. A receiving computer can search for specific data items by searching for their identifiers in the data stream by jumping the known length of a data packet to the identifier in the next data packet; or
data items are allocated a length sufficient to store the data, and this length variable is stored in another location with a data packet. The receiving computer needs to read the length variable to determine how far to jump to the next identifier location in the data stream.
Clearly, the first method while computationally more simple will require excess bandwidth to transfer redundant information. The second method while computationally more complex requires less bandwidth. Even with the second method, the length variable must be allocated a length sufficiently long enough to define the length of the longest data item. This is turn can be wasteful if data types can vary between long strings or simple integers. Neither method takes into account that identifier lengths can also vary and using a fixed field length for the identifier again requires excess bandwidth.
The present invention defines a simple compact “free format” layout for data items sent over a network, keeping the number of bytes used to a minimum, independent of compression techniques.
DISCLOSURE OF THE INVENTION
Accordingly, the present invention provides a method as claimed in claim
1
.
It will be seen that the method according to the invention produces a data stream in which data type information combines with data packet length and identifier information to reduce the required length of the data stream while providing the added functionality of allowing for type checking at the receiving computer.


REFERENCES:
patent: 4926420 (1990-05-01), Shimizu
patent: 5768271 (1998-06-01), Seid et al.
patent: 5790554 (1998-08-01), Pitcher et al.
patent: 5790677 (1998-08-01), Fox et al.
patent: 6112210 (2000-08-01), Nori et al.

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