Wireless communication assurance for connected vehicles in high network load scenarios

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10873876-B2
Application number	US-201816181479-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Nov 6, 2018
Priority date	Nov 6, 2018
Publication date	Dec 22, 2020
Grant date	Dec 22, 2020

Abstract

The disclosure includes embodiments for reliably transmitting valuable information to an endpoint via a Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) network. In some embodiments, a method includes receiving a stream of data bits describing one or more pieces of information intended to be delivered to the endpoint via the V2X network. The method includes determining one or more values of the one or more pieces of information respectively. The one or more values are evaluated with respect to the endpoint and indicate whether the one or more pieces of information are valuable information with respect to the endpoint. The method includes implementing a communication-assurance action based on the one or more values. The method includes modifying an operation of a communication unit of a connected vehicle based on the communication-assurance action so that the valuable information is reliably delivered to the endpoint even in a scenario where the V2X network is congested.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method for a connected vehicle, comprising:
determining that one or more values of one or more pieces of information from a stream of data bits are valuable information that are intended to be delivered to an endpoint via a Vehicle to Everything (V2X) network by:
evaluating, for a series of value attributes, a series of per-attribute value scores for a corresponding piece of information based on one or more value-evaluation factors of the corresponding piece of information and a roadway context of the endpoint; and
integrating the series of per-attribute value scores to calculate an aggregate value score for the corresponding piece of information;

implementing a communication-assurance action on the stream of data bits based on the one or more values and a network condition of the V2X network; and
modifying an operation of a communication unit of the connected vehicle based on the communication-assurance action so that the valuable information included in the one or more pieces of information is delivered to the endpoint even in a scenario where the V2X network is congested.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
determining context data that describes a roadway context of the endpoint,
wherein the one or more values of the one or more pieces of information are determined based at least in part on the roadway context of the endpoint.

3. The method of claim 2 , further comprising:
annotating each piece of information from the one or more pieces of information with factor data describing one or more value-evaluation factors for the corresponding piece of information,
wherein a value of the corresponding piece of information is determined further based on the one or more value-evaluation factors.

4. The method of claim 3 , wherein the one or more value-evaluation factors include one or more of: a type of an application that generates a set of data bits describing the corresponding piece of information; a type of data content described by the set of data bits; a timestamp describing when the set of data bits is generated; an importance level of the corresponding piece of information; an accuracy of the corresponding piece of information; a resolution of the corresponding piece of information; or a source of the corresponding piece of information.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the valuable information includes at least one of safety-related information that helps the endpoint operate more safely, efficiency-related information that helps the endpoint operate more efficiently, or a type of information that an operator of the endpoint explicitly specified as being valuable.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the series of value attributes includes one or more of: a time dependency attribute; a space dependency attribute; an information quality attribute; a conditionality attribute; a generalizability attribute; an urgency attribute; and an information path attribute.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the aggregate value score is an average of the series of per-attribute value scores.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein integrating the series of per-attribute value scores to calculate the aggregate value score comprises:
executing an analytic hierarchy process to calculate the aggregate value score for the corresponding piece of information based on the series of per-attribute value scores.

9. The method of claim 8 , wherein executing the analytic hierarchy process to calculate the aggregate value score comprises:
determining a corresponding application-dependent weight for each value attribute from the series of value attributes; and
calculating a weighted average of the series of per-attribute value scores as the aggregate value score for the corresponding piece of information based on the corresponding application-dependent weight for each value attribute.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein implementing the communication-assurance action on the stream of data bits comprises:
storing one or more sets of data bits included in the stream of data bits in a queue, wherein the one or more sets of data bits describe the one or more pieces of information respectively;
sorting the one or more sets of data bits in the queue based on the one or more values of the one or more pieces of information; and
forwarding the one or more sets of data bits to the communication unit of the connected vehicle sequentially based on an order of the one or more sets of data bits in the queue, so that the communication unit of the connected vehicle is configured to transmit the valuable information to the endpoint before other information included in the one or more pieces of information.

11. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
determining network data that describes the network condition of the V2X network, wherein implementing the communication-assurance action on the stream of data bits comprises:
responsive to the network condition of the V2X network exceeding a predetermined congestion threshold, triggering one or more remedial actions to be performed on the stream of data bits.

12. The method of claim 11 , wherein the one or more remedial actions include one or more of: reducing a transmission rate of the stream of data bits so that a transmission speed of the communication unit of the connected vehicle is reduced; discarding, from the stream of data bits, one or more sets of data bits based on the one or more values so that the communication unit of the connected vehicle transmits one or more remaining sets of data bits that describe the valuable information to the endpoint via the V2X network; implementing a hybrid networking configuration so that one or more network interfaces corresponding to one or more types of V2X networks are selected to transmit the valuable information to the endpoint in parallel; and transmitting the valuable information to the endpoint multiple times.

13. The method of claim 12 , wherein the one or more remaining sets of data bits that describe the valuable information each correspond to a value greater than a predetermined value threshold, and the one or more sets of data bits to be discarded that describe other information included in the one or more pieces of information each correspond to a value less than the predetermined value threshold.

14. The method of claim 12 , wherein the one or more remaining sets of data bits that describe the valuable information each correspond to a value greater than that of each of the one or more sets of data bits to be discarded that describe other information included in the one or more pieces of information.

15. A system comprising:
an onboard vehicle computer system of a connected vehicle, including a communication unit, a processor and a non-transitory memory storing computer code which, when executed by the processor, causes the processor to:
determine that one or more values of one or more pieces of information from a stream of data bits are valuable information that are intended to be delivered to an endpoint via a Vehicle to Everything (V2X) network by:
evaluating, for a series of value attributes, a series of per-attribute value scores for a corresponding piece of information based on one or more value-evaluation factors of the corresponding piece of information and a roadway context of the endpoint; and
integrating the series of per-attribute value scores to calculate an aggregate value score for the corresponding piece of information;

implement a communication-assurance action on the stream of data bits based on the one or more values and a network condition of the V2X network; and
modify an operati

Assignees

• Toyota Motor Co Ltd

Inventors

• Higuchi Takamasa
• Altintas Onur
• Zorzi Michele
• Zanella Andrea
• Giordani Marco

Classifications

• H04W8/04

  Registration at HLR or HSS [Home Subscriber Server] · CPC title

• H04W4/027

  using movement velocity, acceleration information · CPC title

• H04L47/2475

  for supporting traffic characterised by the type of applications · CPC title

• H04W28/04 Primary

  Error control · CPC title

• H04W4/40 Primary

  for vehicles, e.g. vehicle-to-pedestrians [V2P] · CPC title