Infrastructure controller for an infrastructure

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-12004063-B2
Application number	US-202117643853-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Dec 13, 2021
Priority date	Dec 17, 2020
Publication date	Jun 4, 2024
Grant date	Jun 4, 2024

Abstract

An infrastructure-controller (206) for an infrastructure (202), wherein the infrastructure has a plurality of Bluetooth Low Energy, “BLE”, nodes (208, 210, 212) associated with it. The infrastructure-controller (206) is configured to: identify one of the plurality of BLE nodes as a current-BLE-node (212), and activate the current-BLE-node (212) for communication with a key (204) using BLE signals; determine a communication-quality-indicator for each of the plurality of BLE nodes (208, 210, 212), that represents the quality of communication with the key (204); based on the communication-quality-indicators, identify one of the plurality of BLE nodes as a next-BLE-node (210); and provide connection-information to the next-BLE-node (210) using out-of-band signalling (214). The infrastructure-controller (206) can then deactivate the current-BLE-node (212); and activate the next-BLE-node (212) for continued communication with the key (204) using BLE signals.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. An infrastructure-controller for an infrastructure, wherein the infrastructure has a plurality of Bluetooth Low Energy, “BLE”, nodes associated with it, the infrastructure-controller configured to:
identify one of the plurality of BLE nodes as a current-BLE-node, and activate the current-BLE-node for communication with a key using BLE signals;
determine a communication-quality-indicator for each of the plurality of BLE nodes, that represents the quality of communication with the key;
based on the communication-quality-indicators, identify one of the plurality of BLE nodes as a next-BLE-node;
provide connection-information to the next-BLE-node using out-of-band signalling;
deactivate the current-BLE-node; and
activate the next-BLE-node for continued communication with the key using BLE signals.

2. The infrastructure-controller of claim 1 , wherein the plurality of BLE nodes are for sending and receiving signals to and from a key at a frequency of 2.4 GHz.

3. The infrastructure-controller of claim 1 , wherein the communication-quality-indicators comprise RSSI-values.

4. The infrastructure-controller claim 1 , wherein the communication-quality-indicators comprise a count of missed connection events.

5. The infrastructure-controller of claim 1 , configured to:
determine a communication-quality-indicator for the current-BLE-node; and
determine the communication-quality-indicators for each of the plurality of BLE nodes in response to the communication-quality-indicator for the current-BLE-node satisfying a consider-node-change-criterion.

6. The infrastructure-controller of claim 5 , wherein:
the communication-quality-indicator for the current-BLE-node comprises an RSSI-value; and
the consider-node-change-criterion comprises an RSSI-threshold such that the infrastructure-controller is configured to determine the communication-quality-indicators for each of the plurality of BLE nodes in response to the RSSI-value for the current-BLE-node being less than the RSSI-threshold.

7. The infrastructure-controller of claim 5 , wherein:
the communication-quality-indicators for the current-BLE-node comprises a count of missed connection events; and
the consider-node-change-criterion comprises a missed-connection-threshold such that the infrastructure-controller is configured to determine the communication-quality-indicators for each of the plurality of BLE nodes in response to the count of missed connection events for the current-BLE-node being greater than the missed-connection-threshold.

8. The infrastructure-controller of claim 1 , configured to:
identify one of the plurality of BLE nodes as the next-BLE-node by selecting the BLE node that has the communication-quality-indicator that represents the highest quality connection.

9. The infrastructure-controller of claim 1 , configured to:
determine a relative-key-location, which represents the location of the key relative to the infrastructure; and
identify one of the plurality of BLE nodes as the next-BLE-node based on the relative-key-location.

10. The infrastructure-controller of claim 1 , configured to:
determine a key-node-distance for each of the plurality of BLE nodes, which represents the distance between the key and the respective BLE node; and
identify one of the plurality of BLE nodes as the next-BLE-node based on the key-node-distances.

11. The infrastructure-controller of claim 10 , configured to:
identify one of the plurality of BLE nodes as the next-BLE-node by selecting the BLE node that has the lowest key-node-distance.

12. The infrastructure-controller of claim 1 , configured to activate or deactivate the plurality of BLE nodes by sending out-of-band signalling to the BLE nodes, wherein the out-of-band signalling is out of band with respect to the BLE signals.

13. The infrastructure-controller of claim 12 , wherein the out-of-band signalling comprises signalling sent over a Controller Area Network bus.

14. A computer-implemented method comprising:
identifying one of a plurality of Bluetooth Low Energy, “BLE”, nodes as a current-BLE-node, and activating the current-BLE-node for communication with a key using BLE signals;
determining a communication-quality-indicator for each of the plurality of BLE nodes, that represents the quality of communication with the key;
identifying one of the plurality of BLE nodes as a next-BLE-node based on the communication-quality-indicators;
providing connection-information to the next-BLE-node using out-of-band signalling;
deactivating the current-BLE-node; and
activating the next-BLE-node for continued communication with the key using BLE signals.

15. The method of claim 14 , wherein the plurality of BLE nodes are for sending and receiving signals to and from a key at a frequency of 2.4 GHz.

16. The method of claim 14 , wherein the communication-quality-indicators comprise RSSI-values.

17. The method of claim 14 , wherein the communication-quality-indicators comprise a count of missed connection events.

18. The method of claim 14 , further comprising:
determining a communication-quality-indicator for the current-BLE-node; and
determining the communication-quality-indicators for each of the plurality of BLE nodes in response to the communication-quality-indicator for the current-BLE-node satisfying a consider-node-change-criterion.

19. The method of claim 18 , wherein:
the communication-quality-indicator for the current-BLE-node comprises an RSSI-value; and
the consider-node-change-criterion comprises an RSSI-threshold such that the infrastructure-controller is configured to determine the communication-quality-indicators for each of the plurality of BLE nodes in response to the RSSI-value for the current-BLE-node being less than the RSSI-threshold.

20. The method of claim 18 , wherein:
the communication-quality-indicators for the current-BLE-node comprises a count of missed connection events; and
the consider-node-change-criterion comprises a missed-connection-threshold such that the infrastructure-controller is configured to determine the communication-quality-indicators for each of the plurality of BLE nodes in response to the count of missed connection events for the current-BLE-node being greater than the missed-connection-threshold.

Assignees

• Nxp Bv

Inventors

• Buyuksahin Mehmet Ufuk
• Eber Wolfgang
• Haslinger Dorian

Classifications

• H04W36/302

  due to low signal strength · CPC title

• H04W36/035

  in self-organising networks · CPC title

• H04W36/18

  for allowing seamless reselection, e.g. soft reselection · CPC title

• H04W4/80 Primary

  Services using short range communication, e.g. near-field communication [NFC], radio-frequency identification [RFID] or low energy communication · CPC title

• H04W4/33

  for indoor environments, e.g. buildings · CPC title