JP2005006131A - Appropriate band setting data transmitting mobile terminal, appropriate band setting device, and appropriate band setting transmission and reception system - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To obtain a device and system for giving communication with high quality and without congestion by obtaining physical position information with a mobile terminal existing and communication state information and by designating an appropriate communication band on the basis of the information. <P>SOLUTION: An appropriate band setting data transmitting mobile terminal 102 is provided with a position information acquiring part 104, a communication information transmitting part 105 for transmitting the acquired positional information and self-receiving state, and a receiving part 114 for receiving contents information with quality based on the transmitted communication information in a mobile terminal that receives contents. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2005,JPO&NCIPI

Description

[0001]
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a server and a client that perform streaming distribution to mobile terminals in a combined wired and wireless network. More specifically, the present invention relates to streaming distribution that provides a more stable quality content by controlling the band for each mobile terminal according to the position of the mobile terminal.
[0002]
[Prior art]
As a congestion control technique in a packet network, there is a system and a method “communication system and communication method, transmission terminal and reception terminal” disclosed in Patent Document 1. The configuration shown here transmits the moving average of jitter and the packet loss rate on the receiving side to the transmitting side, determines the communication state for each session on the transmitting side, predicts changes in the communication state, and transmits the transmission bit rate. And controlling the coding rate.
Further, as a technique for improving communication efficiency by using location information of a mobile terminal, there is an apparatus “information relay apparatus” disclosed in Patent Document 2. As in the second prior art disclosed in this publication, there are several information exchange methods for mobile stations, each having advantages and disadvantages. In the configuration shown in this document, the communication efficiency is improved by selecting an optimum information exchange method between information relay apparatuses or determining an optimum route from position information / movement frequency / communication frequency.
[0003]
Further, as a bandwidth control technique using a radio channel, there is a scheme “ABR service radio channel control scheme and a radio base station and a mobile terminal using the method” disclosed in Patent Document 3. The configuration shown in this document is a control method for allocating an optimal wireless line using congestion information on the wired side in a wireless base station in a wired / wireless composite network. When congestion occurs on the wired side and the transfer bandwidth becomes narrow, the wireless line that has been allocated to that session is released, and when the transfer band that can avoid congestion is restored, the wireless line is allocated. By going, wireless resources are used effectively.
[0004]
[Patent Document 1]
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-230809 [Patent Document 2]
JP-A-7-235927 [Patent Document 3]
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-78146
[Problems to be solved by the invention]
The conventional system, apparatus, and method are configured as described above. In the first conventional example (Patent Document 1), congestion state detection / prediction is performed only with network information such as jitter and packet loss rate on the receiving side. And control the bandwidth based on that. However, it is difficult to detect / predict the congestion state in real time only with network information because the receiving terminal moves during streaming delivery in a mobile terminal, and a handover occurs or a communication error occurs due to an obstacle. There is a problem of being.
The second conventional example (Patent Document 2) is a method for avoiding congestion by selecting an optimum routing method, and the same technology must be applied to all relay apparatuses. In addition, the method of improving the communication efficiency by determining the optimal route does not change the bandwidth of the streaming data transmitted from the transmission side, so it is not possible to cope with congestion even if any route is selected in a severe congestion state. There is a problem.
The same applies to the third conventional example (Patent Document 3), and the technology for allocating an optimal radio channel must be applied to all radio base stations, and the effective use of resources is achieved by the optimal radio channel allocation. However, since the bandwidth of streaming data transmitted from the transmission side does not change, there is a problem that congestion cannot be avoided if a large amount of data is transmitted to many mobile terminals in the same base station range.
[0006]
The present invention has been made in order to solve the above-described problems, and obtains physical location information and communication state information where a mobile terminal is located, specifies an appropriate communication band based on the information, and provides high quality. An apparatus or system that provides communication without congestion is obtained.
[0007]
[Means for Solving the Problems]
An appropriate band setting data transmission mobile terminal according to the present invention is a mobile terminal that receives content,
A location information acquisition unit, a communication information transmission unit that transmits the acquired location information and its own reception state, and a reception unit that receives content information with quality based on the transmitted communication information.
[0008]
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
Embodiment 1 FIG.
A specific example of designating an appropriate communication band based on the position correspondence results based on the physical position where the mobile terminal is located will be described.
FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating a configuration of a transmission device and an appropriate band setting transmission / reception system according to the present embodiment. FIG. 2 is a flowchart showing operations performed by a transmission apparatus as an appropriate band setting apparatus and a mobile terminal in the system. FIG. 3 is a diagram showing a data example of a session / position management database for managing the position information received from each mobile terminal by the transmission apparatus as the appropriate band setting apparatus for each time period.
The features in these figures are that the mobile terminal 102 has means for obtaining position information from GPS (Global Positioning System) or the like as position information, and communication information transmitting means for transmitting the position information and its own communication state. It is that.
The transmission apparatus 101 also serves as an appropriate band instruction apparatus, has a position and communication state management database, and communication state for determining the communication state of each mobile terminal based on the area determination means based on these data and the area determination It has a judging means, and performs streaming delivery to each mobile terminal.
[0009]
First, the configuration of the mobile terminal will be described.
In FIG. 1, a mobile terminal 102 includes a position acquisition unit 104 that obtains spatial position and location information by GPS, adds its own identifier to the obtained position information, and further includes the reception state of the mobile terminal as a communication state. Thus, the communication information transmission unit 105 periodically transmits to the transmission device 101 and the reception device 114 that receives content from a content distribution server connected to a public network or the like.
Further, according to circumstances, it includes an azimuth acquisition unit 116, a surrounding communication state receiving unit 117 that receives surrounding information from the transmission device, and a surrounding communication state display unit 118 that displays the surrounding communication state based on these pieces of information.
[0010]
Next, the configuration of the transmission apparatus will be described.
The transmission apparatus 101 includes a location information with a mobile terminal identifier from the mobile terminal, a communication information receiving unit 106 that receives the reception status of the mobile terminal as communication information, and a location region of a location region set in advance from this information. An area determination unit 109 for determining whether there is a mobile terminal, an information storage unit 107 including a location management database for storing the identified mobile terminal position and reception status information every time, and reception status information from the mobile terminal A communication state determination unit 110 for determining the communication state of the mobile station, a position communication state management unit 111 for managing the current communication state in each position region from the output of the communication state determination unit 110 and the output of the region determination unit 109, and the result A distribution quality instruction unit 108 for instructing the distribution unit on the basis of the distribution quality. In this embodiment, the content is actually streamed to the mobile terminal. It has also become a distribution unit to be grayed transmission.
Further, in some cases, the surrounding communication state transmission unit 115 that extracts necessary information from the information storage unit 107 and transmits it as the surrounding state to the mobile terminal 102, and the amount that gives the communication band to the mobile terminal from the output of the position communication state management unit 111 A bandwidth control unit 112 that calculates and controls the information, and a traveling direction identification unit 113 that identifies the traveling direction of the mobile terminal from the stored past data of the mobile terminal.
[0011]
Next, the operation of the above configuration will be described with reference to FIGS.
In the present embodiment, a case will be described in which a transmitting apparatus that performs streaming performs distribution by controlling a band. In response to a content request from the mobile terminal 102, the transmission apparatus 101 that performs streaming distribution performs streaming distribution of the content. The content can be video or audio. Between the transmission apparatus 101 and the mobile terminal 102, the transmission apparatus 101 side is on a wired network such as the Internet or an intranet, and the mobile terminal 102 is configured by a composite network in a wireless area.
In FIG. 2, first, the mobile terminal 102 acquires position information (step 201, hereinafter referred to as S). As a method for acquiring position information, a mobile terminal equipped with a device capable of specifying a position such as a GPS receiver is assumed. For example, a longitude / latitude value is acquired.
Next, the mobile terminal 102 acquires reception state information (S202). As a method for acquiring the reception state information, there is a moving average of jitter on the reception side and a packet loss rate, etc., shown in Patent Document 1 as a first conventional example. For example, also in this embodiment, the packet loss rate and jitter of streaming data received by the mobile terminal 102 are used as reception state information.
[0012]
Next, the mobile terminal 102 transmits position information and reception status information to the transmission apparatus 101. As a transmission method, by using RTP (Real-Time Transport Protocol) (RFC1889) as a streaming protocol, information on the receiving side is sent to the transmission apparatus 101 by RTCP (RTP Control Protocol) RR (Receiver Report). Can do. In RTCP, a payload specification of reception status information is defined and can be used, but since position information is not currently defined, a payload is added independently. In addition, in RTCP, since RR is sent when SR (Sender Report) periodically sent from the transmission side is received, position information and reception status information can also be sent to the transmission apparatus 101 periodically.
These processes (S201 to S203) of the mobile terminal 102 are repeated while the streaming distribution session is established. When RTCP is used, these processes (S201 to S203) are performed when the SR is sent from the transmission apparatus. When the session is disconnected, these processes (S201 to S203) are terminated.
[0013]
The transmitting apparatus 101 receives position information and reception state information from the mobile terminal 102 (S205), and writes the position information in the information storage unit (S206). As a method of writing the position information in the information storage unit, as shown in FIG. 3, the time when the position information is received and the position information such as longitude / latitude are written for each session.
Next, it is determined from the position information which mesh region R the mobile terminal 102 is located on the map, and the current mesh region in the session is set as R (S207). As a method for determining the mesh area, for example, as shown in FIG. 4, the map is divided on the mesh, and the mesh area number is specified from the longitude and latitude values of the position information. In the example of FIG. 4, it can be determined that the mobile terminal 301 is located in the mesh area number D3 from the position information of 139 longitude 44 minutes 27 seconds east longitude and 35 degrees 39 minutes 24 seconds north latitude.
Next, the transmitting apparatus 101 identifies the communication state from the reception state information (S208). As a method for identifying a communication state, for example, in Patent Document 1 as a first conventional example, as shown in FIG. 5A, a jitter moving average β, a packet loss rate α, and no response are received state information. There are methods for determining the past and current communication states by classifying them into the five communication states. That is, A → A is good and D → D is bad.
Next, the transmission apparatus 101 writes the mesh area and the communication state in the information storage unit (S209). As shown in FIG. 6, the information storage unit stores the current communication state for the mesh area number for each session (for each mobile terminal).
These processes (S205 to S209) of the transmission apparatus 101 are repeated while the streaming distribution session is established. The disconnected session ends these processes (S205 to S209).
[0014]
When a session is established by a content request from the mobile terminal 102, the transmission device 101 performs streaming distribution by bandwidth control in parallel with the above-described transmission / reception / management processing of position information and reception state information. FIG. 7 is a flowchart of the streaming distribution process by the bandwidth control performed by the transmission apparatus 101.
First, all communication states in the current mesh area (S207) are acquired from the information storage unit (S701).
Next, the optimum transfer bandwidth in the session is calculated from these communication states (S702). As an example of calculating the optimum transfer bandwidth, first, the bandwidth increase / decrease rate is defined by the state transition of the communication state as shown in FIG. Then, the current communication state S_cur is determined from the acquired communication state. As a method of determining S_cur, the most recent communication state is S_cur, the most recent communication state among n recent communication states is S_cur, or the average state of the latest n communication states is S_cur. There is a way to. Next, S_cur is applied to the state transition of FIG. 5B to calculate an optimum band from the band increase / decrease rate.
Next, the transmission apparatus 101 controls transmission data within the optimum band and performs streaming distribution to the mobile terminal 102 (S703). As a method of controlling transmission data, there is a method of switching to a data or stream smaller than the optimum band and distributing when content has a hierarchical data configuration or scalable stream data.
[0015]
FIG. 8 is a flowchart of processing for displaying the surrounding communication state on the mobile terminal.
First, the communication state around the current mesh area is acquired from the information storage unit (S801). For example, when the current mesh region is D3 in FIG. 4, the latest communication state in the surrounding D2, E2, E3, E4, D4, C4, C3, and C2 is acquired from the information storage unit. Only D2, E3, D4, and C3 may be used.
Next, the surrounding communication state is transmitted to the mobile terminal 102 (S802). As a transmission method, by using RTP as a streaming protocol, it is possible to send information on the transmission side to the mobile terminal 102 by RTCP SR (Sender Report). At present, the payload of communication state information is not defined in RTCP, so the payload is added independently.
[0016]
These processes (S801 and S802) of the transmission apparatus 101 are repeated while a streaming distribution session is established. When the session is disconnected, these processes (S801, S802) are terminated.
Next, the mobile terminal 102 receives the surrounding communication state sent from the transmission apparatus 101 (S804).
Next, the mobile terminal 102 acquires direction information (S805). As a method of acquiring azimuth information, a mobile terminal equipped with a device capable of specifying an azimuth such as an azimuth magnet is assumed. For example, true north is 0 degrees, the azimuth is represented by 360 degrees, and the display orientation of the mobile terminal 102 is expressed in degrees. Get in.
Next, as shown in FIG. 9, the surrounding communication state is displayed on the display of the mobile terminal in accordance with the direction of the display (S806).
[0017]
As described above, since the communication state is determined for each region based on the position information and the reception state information received from the mobile terminal, and streaming delivery is performed in an optimum band for each mobile terminal, the transmission device and the mobile terminal End-to-end QoS (Quality of Service) can be realized without incorporating a new technology in a relay apparatus between the terminals, and more stable streaming distribution is possible.
In addition, the information is divided into areas, and the information storage unit for storing the position information and reception status information of the mobile terminal in each divided area, and the information is used to calculate the optimum transfer bandwidth for each mobile terminal. Furthermore, since the band is controlled by estimating the traveling direction of the mobile terminal, not only the QoS based on the spatial position, that is, not only the communication status of the own session but also the communication status information of other sessions belonging to the same area. To calculate the optimum transfer bandwidth and perform streaming delivery.
Still further, by transmitting the surrounding communication state from the transmitting device to the mobile terminal, the mobile terminal user can be notified of the surrounding communication state on a display, for example.
[0018]
【The invention's effect】
As described above, according to the present invention, since the transmission streaming band is determined by obtaining the position information and the corresponding communication state, there is an effect that appropriate transmission can be performed even by existing equipment.
[Brief description of the drawings]
FIG. 1 is a configuration diagram showing a streaming transmission apparatus and an appropriate band setting transmission / reception system according to a first embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 2 is a flowchart showing operations of an appropriate band setting device and a mobile terminal in the first embodiment.
FIG. 3 is a diagram showing a storage example of a location management database in the first embodiment.
FIG. 4 is a diagram showing position information as a position area with a mesh in the first embodiment.
FIG. 5 is a diagram showing communication state determination criteria and band instruction criteria in the first embodiment.
FIG. 6 is a diagram illustrating an example of storing a communication state corresponding to a location area and a session.
FIG. 7 is a flowchart showing an operation performed by a bandwidth control unit in the first embodiment.
FIG. 8 is a flowchart showing an operation performed by a surrounding communication state transmission unit in the first embodiment.
9 is a diagram illustrating an example of a surrounding communication state displayed by the mobile terminal in Embodiment 1. FIG.
[Explanation of symbols]
DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 101 Transmission apparatus, 102 Mobile terminal, 104 Location acquisition part, 105 Communication information transmission part, 106 Communication information reception part, 107 Information storage part, 108 Delivery quality instruction | indication part and delivery part, 109 Area | region determination part, 110 Communication state determination part, 111 Position communication state management unit, 112 Band control unit, 113 Travel direction identification unit, 114 receiving device, 115 Ambient communication state transmission unit, 116 Direction acquisition unit, 117 Ambient communication state reception unit, 118 Ambient communication state display unit

Claims (8)

In a mobile terminal that receives content,
A position information acquisition unit; a communication information transmission unit that transmits the acquired position information and its reception state; and a reception unit that receives content information with quality based on the transmitted communication information. An appropriate bandwidth setting data transmission mobile terminal characterized by An azimuth acquisition unit that obtains an azimuth, a surrounding communication state receiving unit that receives a communication state in the adjacent surroundings of the current position, and a surrounding communication state display that displays a communication state based on the acquired azimuth information and the adjacent surrounding communication state The appropriate band setting data transmission mobile terminal according to claim 1, further comprising: An information storage unit that receives position information from a mobile terminal and a reception state at the terminal as communication information, and stores it as a communication state including position information;
An appropriate band setting device comprising: a distribution quality instruction unit that determines a content distribution band based on the obtained stored content and instructs distribution, and notifies the content distribution device. 4. The appropriate bandwidth setting device according to claim 3, wherein the appropriate bandwidth setting device also serves as a content distribution device. The information storage unit stores the information by dividing the mesh based on the position information from the mobile terminal, managing the position information as the divided area information, and storing the temporal communication state in the divided area. A band control unit that instructs a band based on a communication state,
5. The appropriate band setting device according to claim 3, wherein the distribution quality instruction unit instructs distribution according to an instruction from the band control unit. 6. The appropriate band setting device according to claim 5, wherein the band control unit lowers the band when a communication state good in time continues and increases the band when the communication state deteriorates in time. 4. A surrounding communication state transmitting unit that obtains a surrounding communication state adjacent to the mobile terminal from the information storage unit and transmits it as surrounding communication state information to the target mobile terminal. Or the suitable band setting apparatus of Claim 4. In a system for transmitting content from a transmission device to a mobile terminal,
Transmission movement comprising: a location information acquisition unit; a communication information transmission unit that transmits the acquired location information and its own reception state; and a reception unit that receives content information with quality based on the transmitted communication information A terminal,
An information storage unit that receives position information from a mobile terminal and a reception state at the terminal as communication information, and stores it as a communication state including position information;
An appropriate band setting device comprising: a distribution quality instruction unit that determines a content distribution band based on the obtained storage content and instructs distribution;
An appropriate band setting transmission / reception system comprising: a transmission apparatus that distributes content in a distribution band instructed by the appropriate band setting apparatus.

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