Beam provisioning for sensory data collection for 5G or other next generation networks

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11425652-B2
Application number	US-202017102892-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Nov 24, 2020
Priority date	Mar 28, 2019
Publication date	Aug 23, 2022
Grant date	Aug 23, 2022

Abstract

Deployment of Internet-of-things devices can comprise sensors deployed in remote and hard to reach areas and locations. Due to lack of access to reliable power, these sensors cannot always be connected to a network and also have limited computation power. Consequently, a mechanism can be established to periodically access these sensors and collect data from them. The mechanism can utilize a mobile radio unit device to serve as data collectors. The mobile radio unit device can make use of an adaptive beam scanning to perform sensory data collection via the beam scanning operation. Additionally, the platform can also comprise a radio access network intelligent controller to manage the data collecting radio units by providing specific instructions and data collection methodologies.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A drone device, comprising:
a processor; and
a memory that stores executable instructions that, when executed by the processor, facilitate performance of operations, comprising:
in response to a trigger event being determined to have occurred, receiving, from network equipment, instruction data representative of an instruction to send a first beam to a network sensor device, wherein the trigger event is a type of weather;
determining that the drone device is within a defined proximity to the network sensor device; and
in response to determining that the drone device is within the defined proximity of the network sensor device, sending the first beam to the network sensor device to modify a status of the network sensor device, resulting in a modified status of the network sensor device, wherein the modified status is an active status.

2. The drone device of claim 1 , wherein the network sensor device is configured to transmit sensory data.

3. The drone device of claim 1 , wherein a second beam from the network sensor device comprises sensory data generated by the network sensor device.

4. The drone device of claim 1 , wherein the first beam is a narrowband beam.

5. The drone device of claim 1 , wherein the drone device is a robot device.

6. The drone device of claim 1 , wherein the network sensor device is an internet-of-things device.

7. The drone device of claim 1 , wherein the first beam is the first beam of beams transmitted by the drone device in a multicast format.

8. The drone device of claim 1 , wherein the determining that the drone device is within the defined proximity to the network sensor device is based on location information collected by a radio access network intelligent controller.

9. A non-transitory machine-readable medium, comprising executable instructions that, when executed by a processor, facilitate performance of operations, comprising:
in response to weather of a type of weather being determined to have occurred, receiving, from network equipment, instruction data representative of an instruction to send a first signal to a sensor device;
determining that a drone device is a defined distance from the sensor device; and
in response to determining that the drone device is the defined distance from the sensor device, facilitating sending the first signal from the drone device to the sensor device to initiate an active status of the sensor device.

10. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 9 , wherein the sensor device is a first sensor device, and wherein the operations further comprise:
facilitating sending a multicast signal to the first sensor device and a second sensor device concurrently.

11. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 9 , wherein a multicast signal comprises the first signal.

12. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 9 , wherein the sensor device is a first sensor device, and wherein the operations further comprise:
in response to facilitating sending a multicast signal, receiving a third signal from a second sensor device.

13. A method, comprising:
in response to a defined triggering event being determined to have occurred, receiving, by a drone device comprising a processor, instruction data representative of an instruction to send a first signal to a network sensor that is part of a network, wherein the trigger event is a type of weather;
receiving, by the drone device, an indication that the drone device is within a defined proximity to the network sensor; and
in response to receiving the indication, sending, by the drone device, the first signal to the network sensor to modify a status of the network sensor, resulting in a modified status of the network sensor, wherein the modified status is an active status.

14. The method of claim 13 , further comprising:
receiving, by the drone device, beam sequence data representative of a sequence of beams to be sent to the network sensor.

15. The method of claim 13 , wherein the first signal is a narrowband signal.

16. The method of claim 13 , wherein the status is modified from a sleep status to the active status.

17. The method of claim 13 , wherein sending the first signal is based on a location of the drone device in relation to the network sensor.

18. The method of claim 13 , wherein receiving the instruction data is further in response to a condition associated with a time interval being determined to be present.

19. The method of claim 13 , wherein receiving the first signal is associated with a multicast function of the drone device.

20. The method of claim 13 , wherein the drone device communicates according to a multiple input multiple output communication protocol, and wherein the receiving and the sending are via multiple antennas.

Assignees

• At & T Ip I Lp

Inventors

• Tofighbakhsh Mostafa
• Jana Shraboni
• Ungureanu Bogdan
• Sharma Deva-Datta
• Jana Rittwik

Classifications

• H04W4/06

  Selective distribution of broadcast services, e.g. multimedia broadcast multicast service [MBMS]; Services to user groups; One-way selective calling services · CPC title

• H04W52/0245 Primary

  according to signal strength · CPC title

• H04W52/0229 Primary

  where the received signal is a wanted signal · CPC title

• H04W4/70

  Services for machine-to-machine communication [M2M] or machine type communication [MTC] · CPC title