Location system congestion management

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-12320908-B2
Application number	US-202017610542-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	May 13, 2020
Priority date	May 16, 2019
Publication date	Jun 3, 2025
Grant date	Jun 3, 2025

Abstract

Location-based systems, such as a Real-time Location System (RTLS), are used to locate and track assets such as equipment, people, etc. In order to accomplish high accuracy in determining locations of assets, the information sent to the location server from sensors should be accurate, relevant, sufficient, and timely. The limitations of a low bandwidth network between the sensors and the location server may pose challenges to reliably determining locations of assets. This invention is related to a hybrid lighting and location system, which involves the use of a system control device and lighting devices that may include integrated sensors, transceivers, etc. Different embodiments are disclosed on apparatus, methods and systems to resolve the potential network congestion in such a hybrid system.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A method of operating a lighting and location system, comprising:
receiving, by a sensor, beacon signals from an asset tag during a time window;
determining, by a processor, signal strengths of the beacon signals received during the time window;
after the time window, identifying only a representative beacon signal from among the beacon signals received from the asset tag, during the time window based on a comparison of the signal strengths of the beacon signals in which a signal strength of the representative beacon signal is higher than remaining signal strengths of remaining beacon signals of the beacon signals during the time window; and
transmitting, by a transmitter, identification (ID) information of the only representative beacon signal and signal strength information of the representative beacon signal such that the ID information is validated against a list of valid ID information upon reception of the transmitted ID information.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the beacon signals are Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacon signals and wherein the ID information and the signal strength information are transmitted using a ZigBee compliant signal.

3. A method of operating a lighting and location system, comprising:
receiving, by a sensor, beacon signals from asset tags during a time window;
processing, by a processor, the beacon signals by filtering out one or more of the beacon signals based on signal strengths, the one or more of the beacon signals that are filtered out each having a signal strength that is less than a threshold signal strength with respect to remaining beacon signals from the beacon signals;
after the time window, identifying, by the processor, only representative beacon signals from among the remaining beacon signals, wherein each representative beacon signal is associated with a respective asset tag of the asset tags, during the time window;
identifying, by the processor, one or more representative beacon signals from among the representative beacon signals; and
transmitting identification (ID) information and signal strength information of the only one or more representative beacon signals such that the ID information is validated against a list of valid ID information upon reception of the transmitted ID information.

Assignees

• Signify Holding Bv

Inventors

• Ainapure Ameya
• Douglas Bruce Andrew Carl
• Riley Peyton
• Dunn Paul
• Matute Leonardo

Classifications

• G01S5/0009 Primary

  Transmission of position information to remote stations (involving assistance data G01S5/0236) · CPC title

• G01S5/02216

  Timing or synchronisation of the receivers · CPC title

• H04W4/80

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

• G01S5/02213

  Receivers arranged in a network for determining the position of a transmitter · CPC title

• G01S5/0221

  Receivers · CPC title