JPH11243575A - Mobile radio communication equipment - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a mobile radio communication device capable of accurately calculating a present position. SOLUTION: Positional information on each from plural base stations is obtained. A receiving electric field intensity detecting means 16 for detecting the receiving electric field intensity of radio waves from each of the plural base stations is provided. A present position calculating means 20 calculates the present position from the positional information obtained from the plural base stations and the receiving electric field intensity from each of the plural base stations detected by the means 16.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

[0001] The present invention relates to, for example, PHS
The present invention relates to a mobile radio communication device using a mobile phone communication system such as a (personal handy phone system).

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art A portable telephone such as a PHS communicates with a nearest base station via a wireless line to detect the electric field strength of the base station. When the base station having the highest electric field strength is detected, the base station covers the base station. Within the area, telephone communication is performed via the base station. When the electric field strength of the radio wave received from the base station falls below a predetermined threshold value due to the movement of the mobile phone, another base station is searched for a base station having a larger electric field strength. It is changed to communication via the Internet.

[0003] By the way, the base station transmits its position information to the mobile phone through a control channel. Therefore, it has been conventionally performed to detect the current position by a mobile wireless communication device such as a mobile phone using the position information from the base station. For example, since the electric field strength of a radio wave received from a base station is inversely proportional to the distance from the base station, the current position of the wireless communication device is estimated using the received electric field strength.

[0004]

However, in the case of a conventional portable telephone, as described above, if the electric field strength is larger than a predetermined threshold value within the coverage area of one base station, the base station is not affected by this. And only the location information obtained from the one base station is used. Therefore, even if the position of the mobile phone is estimated using the received electric field strength as described above, only the distance from the base station in communication is obtained from the electric field strength, and the position information of the mobile phone is obtained. What is obtained is information of an area corresponding to the received electric field strength centering on the base station.

[0005] Therefore, there is a problem that only very inaccurate location information of the mobile phone can be obtained in this case.

An object of the present invention is to provide a mobile radio communication device capable of accurately calculating a current position in view of the above points.

[0007]

According to a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided a mobile radio communication apparatus comprising: a position information acquisition unit for acquiring position information from a plurality of base stations; Receiving electric field strength detecting means for detecting a receiving electric field strength of a radio wave from each of the base stations, position information of the plurality of base stations acquired by the position information acquiring means, and detected by the receiving electric field strength detecting means. From the received electric field strength of radio waves from each of the plurality of base stations,
Current position calculating means for calculating the current position.

According to a second aspect of the present invention, in the mobile radio communication apparatus according to the first aspect, a means and a terminal for transmitting the information on the current position calculated by the current position calculating means to an external device are provided. It is characterized by.

According to a third aspect of the present invention, in the mobile radio communication apparatus according to the first aspect, an automatic response means for automatically responding to the incoming call, and after the automatic answering for the incoming call, the other party calculates the current position. A means for transmitting information on the current position calculated by the means is provided.

In the mobile radio communication apparatus according to the first aspect of the present invention, position information from a plurality of receivable base stations is acquired by the position information acquisition means, not limited to the magnitude of the received electric field strength. Then, the received electric field strengths of the radio waves from the plurality of base stations are detected by the received electric field strength detecting means. The current position calculating means calculates the current position using the acquired position information from the plurality of base stations and the respective received electric field strengths.

[0011] The positions of a plurality of base stations are detected from the position information, and how far the mobile radio communication apparatus is from the base stations is detected from the received electric field strength. Location information for the base station,
If the received electric field strength is known, an almost accurate current position will be calculated.

According to the second aspect of the present invention, the information on the calculated current position can be transferred to a device such as a navigation system.

According to the third aspect of the present invention, an automatic response is made to the incoming call, and the information on the calculated current position is transmitted to the other party who made the incoming call. Therefore, this claim 3
If the mobile radio communication device according to the invention of the present invention is carried by, for example, a wandering elderly person, it can be used for various applications such as detecting the current position of the mobile radio communication device simply by receiving an incoming call. .

[0014]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS Embodiments of a mobile radio communication device according to the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

[First Embodiment] FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an embodiment in which the present invention is applied to a mobile phone.

As shown in FIG. 1, a portable telephone according to this embodiment includes a transmitting / receiving antenna 11, a transmitting / receiving circuit 12,
Baseband processing circuit 13, receiver 14, transmitter 1
5, the electric field strength detection circuit 16, and the LCD control 3
1, the LCD 32, the key operation unit 41, the control circuit 20
And

The control circuit 20 includes a CPU 21 and a ROM 22 in which programs for various processing routines are written.
And a work area RAM 23, which are connected to each other through a system bus 24. Also,
A key interface 25 for connecting the key operation unit 41 to the control unit 20 and I / O ports 26, 27, 28 are connected to the system bus 24.

The detection result of the electric field intensity from the electric field intensity detection circuit 16 is supplied to the control circuit 20 through the I / O port 26. The control circuit 20 controls the transmission / reception circuit 12 via the I / O port 27,
Data such as base station position information is exchanged between the baseband processing circuit 13 and the control circuit 20 through the port 28.

The key operation unit 41 includes various operation keys such as a call key, a current position key, and a dial key.
To the CPU.

The control circuit 20 sends necessary display data to the LCD through the LCD control 31,
Perform the necessary display on the screen.

Although not shown, the baseband processing circuit 13 includes an A / D converter for A / D converting an audio signal to be transmitted and a D / A for D / A converting a received digital audio signal.
It has a converter and the like. And the baseband processing circuit 1
At 3, the audio signal from the transmitter 15 is
Transmission processing such as D conversion is performed, and the signal after the processing is converted into a high-frequency signal in the transmission / reception circuit 12, and transmitted from the antenna 11 to the base station.

A radio wave (high-frequency signal) from a base station located in the vicinity of the mobile phone is received by the antenna 11 and transmitted to the baseband processing circuit 13 via the transmission / reception circuit 12.
Supplied to The baseband processing circuit 13 performs D / A conversion and the like to decode an audio signal from the other party, and supplies this audio signal to the receiver 14.

The transmitting / receiving circuit 12 supplies a high-frequency signal from the base station received by the antenna 11 to the electric field strength detecting circuit 16. The electric field strength detection circuit 16 detects the electric field strength of the radio wave from the base station, and outputs the detection result to the control circuit 2.
Notify 0. Further, the baseband circuit 13 notifies the control circuit 20 of the base station ID included in the control channel information and the position information thereof.

The control circuit 20 compares the electric field strengths from a plurality of base stations and controls the transmission / reception circuit 12 so as to select a signal from the base station having the highest electric field strength. Thereafter, as long as the received electric field strength of the radio wave from the selected base station is larger than a predetermined threshold value, communication through the base station is performed as in the related art.

The control circuit 20 calculates the current position using the position information of the plurality of base stations and the respective electric field strengths. The calculation of the current position is always performed in this example.
Rather, it is executed when the current position key is operated from the key operation unit 41. This current position calculation processing will be described next with reference to the flowchart of FIG.

When the current position detection key is operated while the portable telephone of this embodiment is in a standby state,
The processing routine shown in the flowchart of FIG. 2 is started.

First, a search is made for a nearby base station, a radio wave of the found base station is received through a control channel, and position information of the base station transmitted from the base station as information on the control channel is received. , RAM2 of the control circuit 20
2 (step S1). Further, the detection output of the electric field strength detection circuit 16 at that time is used as information on the electric field strength of the base station, and the detected output is stored in the RA corresponding to the position information of the base station.
It is temporarily stored in M22 (step S2).

Next, another base station is searched, radio waves of the found base station are received by a control channel, and information of the control channel is sent from the base station.
The position information of the base station is received, and the RAM
22 (step S3). Then, the detection output of the electric field strength detection circuit 16 at that time is temporarily stored in the RAM 22 as information on the electric field strength of the base station corresponding to the position information of the base station (step S4).

Then, steps S3 and S4
Is performed for all receivable base stations (step S5). Then, when the acquisition of the position information and the detection and storage of the electric field strength are completed for all the receivable base stations, the current position is calculated using the information (step S6). The calculated current position is displayed on the screen of the LCD 32 in this example.

As described above, in this embodiment,
Since the current position is calculated using the position information from a plurality of base stations and the received electric field strength from those base stations, if the position information and the received electric field strength for three or more base stations are obtained, accurate Is calculated.

FIGS. 3 and 4 are diagrams showing the received electric field strength of radio waves from a plurality of base stations and the positional relationship between the portable telephone and each base station. In the example shown in FIG. 3B, when three base stations A, B, and C exist near the mobile phone D, the position of the mobile phone D is closest to the base station A, and then the base station B Is near, and the base station C is in the farthest state. The magnitude of the electric field strength is as shown in FIG.

When the portable telephone D moves from the state shown in FIG. 3 to the position D 'in FIG. 4B, the electric field strength becomes
FIG. 4A shows that the distance from the mobile phone to the base station is inversely proportional to the electric field strength.

It is understood from FIGS. 3 and 4 that the current position of the portable telephone can be accurately calculated by using the position information and the electric field strength information of the three base stations.

In the above description, the calculated position information is
Although the information is displayed on the screen of the LCD 32, the display form is usually information on latitude and longitude. However, in this case, it is difficult to intuitively understand the current position. Therefore, for example, a memory for storing a correspondence table between latitude and longitude information and a place name is stored in the system bus 24.
It is convenient to read the corresponding place name from the correspondence table of the memory and display it instead of displaying the information of the latitude and longitude as the information of the current position.

In the above description, the current position calculation processing is performed only when the current position key is operated. However, in the standby reception state, the current position calculation processing shown in FIG. The position calculation processing routine may be automatically performed and displayed on the LCD screen.

The key operation unit 41 may be provided with a transfer key for information on the current position, and a connector for transferring the information on the current position to an external device through a communication interface such as RS-232C may be provided. With this configuration, it is possible to transfer the information of the accurate current position calculated by the mobile phone to, for example, a portable personal computer or a navigation system connected through the connector and use the information. .

[Second Embodiment] Next, the case where the mobile radio communication device according to the present invention is applied to a device for searching for a wandering elderly person will be described.

The hardware configuration in the case of the second embodiment may be substantially the same as that of FIG.
The transmitter 15 may be omitted.

In the case of the second embodiment, the current position calculation processing routine shown in FIG. 2 is periodically repeated in the standby state, for example, every minute. . Then, the latest information of the calculated current position is stored in the RAM 23.

The apparatus according to the second embodiment automatically responds to an incoming call,
The control circuit 20 has a function of transmitting the information on the current position stored in the third party to the other party who has received the incoming call.

FIG. 5 shows a processing routine at the time of an incoming call in the second embodiment.

That is, when an incoming call is detected (step S11), the apparatus automatically responds to the incoming call (step S12). Then, the current position information stored in the RAM 23 is read and transmitted to the other party (step S13), and the line is disconnected.

According to the search device of the second embodiment, a wandering elderly person is provided with the search device of this embodiment, so that only a telephone call to the search device can be made. The current position of the old man can be surely known.

It is to be noted that this search device can be attached to an infant or a pet and used to know its current position.

The scope of application of the present invention is not limited to the above-mentioned portable radio communication apparatus. For example, the scope of application of the present invention may be considered, such as providing a function for calculating the current position according to the present invention in a navigation system. Can be

[0046]

As described above, according to the present invention, the current position of the mobile radio communication device can be calculated almost accurately by using the position information from a plurality of base stations.

According to the invention of claim 2, the calculated accurate current position information can be easily transferred to an external device.

According to the third aspect of the present invention, the current position of, for example, a wandering elderly person or pet can be easily searched when necessary.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an embodiment of a mobile radio communication device according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart showing a current position calculation processing routine in the embodiment of the mobile radio communication device according to the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a diagram for explaining a current position calculation process according to the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a diagram for explaining a current position calculation process according to the present invention.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart showing a current position transmission processing routine in the embodiment of the mobile radio communication device according to the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 11 ... Antenna, 12 ... Transmission / reception circuit, 13 ... Baseband processing circuit, 14 ... Receiver, 15 ... Transmitter, 16 ... Electric field strength detection circuit, 20 ... Control circuit

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. A position information acquisition unit for acquiring position information from each of a plurality of base stations; a reception electric field intensity detection unit for detecting a reception electric field intensity of radio waves from each of the plurality of base stations; A current position is calculated based on the position information of the plurality of base stations obtained by the position information obtaining unit and the reception electric field intensity of radio waves from each of the plurality of base stations detected by the reception electric field intensity detection unit. A mobile wireless communication device comprising: a position calculating unit. 2. The mobile radio communication apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising means for transmitting information on the current position calculated by said current position calculation means to an external device, and a terminal. apparatus. 3. The mobile radio communication device according to claim 1, wherein: an automatic answering means for automatically answering the incoming call; and after the automatic answering for the incoming call, a counterpart of the current position calculated by the current position calculating means. A mobile radio communication device comprising a means for transmitting information.