KR100951532B1 - A sleep/wake-up decision device and method of home networks system - Google Patents

Abstract

The present invention relates to an active / inactive selection device installed to implement an always-on service of a home network system, comprising: an application processor configured to operate a device connected to the home network system; A packet receiver which receives an external packet signal; Receives a packet from the packet receiver and handles a packet according to the received packet type, processes a packet that does not require a response and a packet whose response pattern is determined, and stores other user data packets in the application processor. Proxy processing unit for transmitting to; An active / inactive switching unit that changes the state of the application processing unit according to a processing result of the proxy processing unit; And a timer for predicting and storing an idle time during which the application processing unit is maintained in an inactive state.

Accordingly, it is possible to provide an apparatus and method for selecting an active / inactive home network system having a low power and high efficiency effect on power consumed by the home network system.

Low Power, Home Network, Power Control

Description

A / SLEEP / WAKE-UP DECISION DEVICE AND METHOD OF HOME NETWORKS SYSTEM}

The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for selecting an activation / deactivation of a home network system, and more particularly, to detect communication traffic transmitted to a home network system and, accordingly, selectively activate / deactivate the system to consume the entire home network system. An apparatus and method for reducing power are provided.

In general, a home network system is a system configured to externally control various devices by connecting a network home appliance (hereinafter, referred to as a device) installed in a home with a home gateway.

In order to implement the home network system, the home gateway must maintain the Always-On state. Accordingly, the home gateway and the device always consume power.

This consumes a lot of power in urban or country units, so the home gateway and the device are switched to standby (power consumed in an inactive state) when the control command of the device is not transmitted. In addition, consuming adequate power only at the time when the device needs to be driven has the effect of saving energy.

Accordingly, in order to efficiently manage the power consumption of the home gateway and the device, research on a method of automatically switching the active / inactive mode of the home gateway and the device has been actively conducted.

1 is a flowchart illustrating a packet processing process of a home network system according to the prior art.

Referring to FIG. 1, first, a device receives a packet signal from an arbitrary transmitting unit in an inactive state (S1) (S2).

Next, the device is activated to determine whether the device is in operation (S3), and the packet is transmitted to the application processor (S4).

Next, the application processor determines whether the delivered packet is valid (S5).

Next, if it is determined that the packet is valid in step S6, the control signal is output to operate in the corresponding operation (S7). If it is determined that the packet is invalid, the packet is dropped (S8).

In the packet processing structure of the home network system according to the related art, the device is activated to determine whether the transmitted packet is valid, and whether the packet is processed in the state where the device is activated is determined. Every time there was a problem that the power consumed to temporarily switch the device to the active state is wasted.

In addition, since this process is repeated periodically, the total power consumption of the home network system increases.

The present invention has been made to solve the above problems, and an object of the present invention is to provide an active / inactive selection apparatus and method for a home network system having a low power, high efficiency effect on the power consumed by the home network system. To provide.

According to the present invention, the active / inactive selection device is installed to implement the Always-On service of the home network system, comprising: an application processing unit for operating a device connected to the home network system; A packet receiver which receives an external packet signal; Receives a packet from the packet receiver and handles a packet according to the received packet type, processes a packet that does not require a response and a packet whose response pattern is determined, and stores other user data packets in the application processor. Proxy processing unit for transmitting to; An active / inactive switching unit that changes the state of the application processing unit according to a processing result of the proxy processing unit; It can be achieved by the active / inactive selection device of the home network system, including; a timer for predicting and storing the idle time in which the application processing unit is kept inactive.

The timer may be configured to store a pattern of accumulated idle time and to predict a next idle time based on the accumulated pattern of idle time.

In addition, the timer may be provided to calculate the average of the accumulated idle time and the most recent idle time at a ratio of 50:50 to predict the next idle time.

In addition, the timer may be set to be set to the predicted idle time when the packet is received in the state in which the application processing unit is maintained in an inactive state and is switched to the active state.

On the other hand, the timer may further include a threshold value of the idle time which is a criterion for determining to switch the application processor to an inactive state when the application processor is in an active state.

Here, the timer may be provided to initialize the timer and recalculate the idle time when the predicted idle time is less than a constant multiple of the threshold.

On the other hand, the above object, according to the present invention, active / inactive selection method applied to implement the always-on (Always-On) service of the home network system, the step of transmitting an external packet signal to the packet receiver; Receiving the packet from the packet receiver and processing the packet according to the type of the received packet; Switching the application processing unit for controlling the operation of the device to an active and inactive state according to the packet processing result; It can also be achieved by the method of selecting the active / inactive of the home network system, including the step of predicting and storing the idle time in which the application processing unit is kept inactive.

 Here, the step of receiving the packet from the packet receiver and processing the packet according to the type of the received packet processes a packet that does not require a response and a packet in which a response pattern is determined. It may be provided to the step of transmitting to the application processor.

The estimating and storing the idle time may be provided by storing a pattern of accumulated idle time and predicting a next idle time based on the pattern of accumulated idle time.

Here, the predicting and storing the idle time may be performed by calculating the average of the accumulated idle time and the most recent idle time at a ratio of 50:50 to predict the next idle time.

The estimating and storing the idle time may include setting the predicted idle time when the application processing unit is switched to the active state by receiving a packet while the application processor is in an inactive state.

Here, the estimating and storing the idle time may further include setting a threshold value of the idle time as a reference for determining to switch the application processor to an inactive state when the application processor is in an active state.

In addition, the predicting and storing the idle time may be provided to initialize and recalculate the predicted idle time when the predicted idle time is less than a constant multiple of the threshold.

According to the present invention, it is possible to provide an apparatus and method for selecting a home network system having an effect of low power and high efficiency with respect to power consumed in a home network system.

Hereinafter, with reference to the accompanying drawings will be described in detail the configuration of the present invention.

Prior to this, terms used in the present specification and claims should not be construed in a dictionary meaning, and the inventors may properly define the concept of terms in order to explain their invention in the best way. It should be construed as meaning and concept consistent with the technical spirit of the present invention.

Therefore, the embodiments shown in the present specification and the drawings are only exemplary embodiments of the present invention, and not all of the technical ideas of the present invention are presented. Therefore, various equivalents It should be understood that water and variations may exist.

2 is a block diagram of an active / inactive selection device of a home network system according to the present invention.

Referring to FIG. 2, an apparatus for selecting an activation / deactivation of a home network system according to the present invention includes an application processing unit 50 for operating devices D1 to Dn connected to a home network system; A packet receiver 10 for receiving an external packet signal; Receives a packet from the packet receiver 10 and handles a packet according to the received packet type, processes a packet that does not require a response and a packet for which a response pattern is determined, and other user data packets. A proxy processing unit 20 for transmitting to the application processing unit 50; An active / inactive switching unit 30 for changing the state of the application processing unit 50 according to the processing result of the proxy processing unit 20; And a timer 40 for predicting and storing an idle time in which the application processing unit 50 is maintained in an inactive state.

Here, the packet receiver 10 is a component that checks a reception event for a packet received from the outside, and may be provided to transmit the received packet to the proxy processing unit 20.

Here, the proxy processing unit 20 may be provided to discriminate the types of packets transmitted from the packet receiving unit 10 and to handle the processing and transmission of the classified packets accordingly.

Here, the type of the transmitted packet can be classified into three types according to the state.

The first is packets that do not require a response, which are packets that do not need to take action, do not need to respond, or are ignored by the operating system's protocol stack.

Packets belonging to the type of the packet include packets in the form of informing status such as broadcast packets, routing protocol packets, and the like, and various hacking related packets.

The second is a packet in which a response pattern is simply defined. These are packets that can be processed by the proxy processing unit 20 without activating the device because the action or response to be taken is static.

The packet belonging to the packet type includes an ARP (Adress Resolution Protocol) packet that converts a logical address (IP address) into a physical address (MAC Adress), a packet Internet Groper (PING) packet that checks transmission and reception status, and host configuration management. Simplify DHCP (Dynamin Host Configuration Protocol) packet, and other various inquiry packets.

The third packet is a device that needs to be activated. These packets are transmitted to the application processor 50 to activate a corresponding device.

The packet belonging to the type of packet includes a general user data packet, that is, a transmission control protocol (TCP) packet, a user datagram protocol (UDP) packet, and various other application protocol packets.

As described above, the proxy processing unit 20 drops packets that do not require a response, handles packets for which a response pattern is determined, and processes other user data packets. ) To the application processing unit 50.

Here, the active / inactive switching unit 30 receives the user data packet from the proxy processing unit 20 and transmits it to the application processing unit 50, and at the same time converts the application processing unit 50 to the active state, The active / inactive state of the application processor 50 is determined according to the control of the timer 40 which will be described later.

Here, the timer 40 may be connected to the application processing unit 50 and the active / inactive switching unit 30 to predict and store an idle time during which the application processing unit 50 remains in an inactive state.

In this case, the idle time may be set to a sum of a deactivation waiting time for the application processing unit 50 to switch to an inactive state and a time for which the application processing unit 50 maintains an inactive state.

In addition, since the idle time is difficult to be expressed as an average value due to the characteristics of Internet traffic having self-similarity, the timer 40 predicts the idle time. The pattern may be stored, and the next idle time may be predicted based on the accumulated pattern of idle time.

Preferably, the timer 40 may adopt a method of predicting the next idle time by calculating the average of the accumulated idle time and the most recent idle time in a ratio of 50:50.

Here, the timer 40 may be set to be set to the predicted idle time when the application processing unit 50 is switched to the active state due to the reception of the user data packet while the application processing unit 50 is maintained in the inactive state.

This is a reference value for the application processor 50 to be inactive. The timer 40 transmits a switch signal to the inactive state of the application processor 50 with reference to the estimated idle time. .

Meanwhile, when the application processor 50 is in an active state, the timer 40 may additionally include a threshold value of idle time which is a reference for determining to switch the application processor 50 to an inactive state.

The threshold of the idle time may be defined differently according to the type of use of the home network system, and the threshold may be used as a reference value for correcting the prediction error of the idle time, which will be described later with reference to FIG. 4.

Here, the timer 40 may be provided to initialize the timer 40 and recalculate the idle time when the predicted idle time is less than a constant multiple of the threshold.

Hereinafter, with reference to Figure 3, it will be described in detail a method and process for selecting the active / inactive of the home network system according to the present invention.

3 is a flowchart illustrating a packet processing procedure of a home network system according to the present invention.

Referring to FIG. 3, the method for enabling / disabling a home network system according to the present invention includes the steps of transmitting an external packet signal to a packet receiver (S10, S20, S30); Receiving a packet from the packet receiver and processing the packet according to the received packet type (S40); Switching the application processor for controlling the operation of the device to an active and inactive state according to the packet processing result (S60); And predicting and storing an idle time during which the application processor is maintained in an inactive state (S50, S70).

Here, the steps (S10, S20, S30) of transmitting the external packet signal to the packet receiver include checking the packet reception event at the packet receiver (S10), confirming the packet reception (S20) and the state of the application processor. Checking may be provided to the step (S30).

In addition, the step S30 of checking the state of the application processor may be provided as a step S30 of maintaining the inactive state of the application processor and a step S32 of maintaining the active state of the application processor.

Here, in the step S30 is configured to transmit the received packet to the proxy processing unit to determine the active and inactive switching of the application processing unit according to the type of the packet, in the step S32 to process the response to the received packet It can be configured to.

On the other hand, receiving a packet from the packet receiving unit and processing the packet according to the type of the received packet (S40) is a step of processing a packet that does not require a response and a packet having a response pattern is determined (S42) and its In step S40, the user data packet may be transmitted to the application processor.

In addition, the step of predicting and storing the idle time (S50, S70) stores the pattern of accumulated idle time, and predicts the next idle time based on the pattern of the accumulated idle time (S50) and the timer An update step (S70) may be provided.

Preferably, the step of predicting the idle time (S50) may be prepared by calculating the average of the accumulated idle time and the most recent idle time in a ratio of 50:50 to predict the next idle time.

In addition, the updating of the timer (S70) may be provided to set the predicted idle time when the packet is received in the state in which the application processing unit is maintained in an inactive state is switched to the active state.

Hereinafter, the process of selecting the active / inactive of the home network system according to the present invention will be described in detail.

First, the packet receiver checks a packet reception event (S10).

Next, the packet reception is confirmed (S20). Here, when the packet reception is confirmed, the process proceeds to the next step. If the packet reception is not confirmed, the process returns to the step S10.

Next, check the status of the application processing unit. Here, when the application processing unit is in an inactive state (S30), the process proceeds to the next step. When the application processing unit is in the active state (S32), the response to the received packet is processed and returned to the step S10.

Next, the type of the received packet is determined (S40). Here, if the received packet is a user data packet, the process proceeds to the next step. If the received packet does not need to respond or the response pattern is static, the proxy processor processes the drop and response (S42), and then, Return to step S10.

Next, an estimate of idle time is calculated (S50). Here, the predicted idle time is calculated by calculating the average of the accumulated idle time and the value of the most recent idle time in a ratio of 50:50.

Next, the application processing unit is switched to the active state (S60), and processes the response to the received packet. Here, various devices connected to the application processing unit may be activated as a whole, but preferably, only devices that operate on the received packets may be selectively activated.

Next, the timer is updated with the predicted value calculated in step S50 (S70). Here, the prediction value of the idle time may be updated or initialized with the prediction value calculated according to the correction of the idle time, which will be described later.

FIG. 4 is a diagram illustrating a process of correcting idle time according to the present invention, wherein (a) shows that a prediction error of a next idle time calculated when an idle time longer than an average value occurs during idle time stored and predicted in a timer. Is a conceptual diagram showing a method of correcting a prediction error of (a).

In Figure 4, I1, I2, I3, I4 is the idle time, R1, R2, R3, R4 is the activation time, I3 ', I4' is the idle time estimate calculated for the I3, I4, Sth is the application The threshold value used as a reference of the decision to switch a process part to an inactive state is shown.

As shown in (a) of FIG. 4, I3 represents a very long time compared to other idle times. In this case, I3 'has a problem that is expected to be shorter than that of I3, and I4' is actually Overestimation may occur due to a longer time than I4.

As described above, when a long idle time occurs suddenly in the middle, a problem arises that the predicted value calculated at the moment and immediately after is unreliable, which can be corrected as shown in FIG. 4 (b).

First, a threshold value Sth, which is a criterion for determining idle time, is set. When the predicted value of I3 'is smaller than 1 times the threshold value Sth, the predicted value is recalculated.

If the recalculated predicted value I3 " is less than twice the threshold, the predicted value is calculated again.

That is, the threshold value Sth of the idle time is set, and a reliable estimate of the idle time can be obtained by comparing the predicted value with the threshold value.

In addition, the comparison between the predicted value and the threshold may be performed in a manner of comparing 1: 1 or 1: n according to the usage environment of the home network system.

That is, when the predicted value is smaller than a constant multiple of the threshold value Sth, the predicted value of the idle time may be provided to be recalculated.

In summary, if user data packet reception no longer occurs in the active state, the prediction value for the idle time is calculated according to the above-described steps, and if the prediction value is smaller than the threshold value, the timer is initialized and activated (Busy Waiting). If the prediction exceeds the threshold, it is deactivated.

When the timer reaches a threshold in the busy waiting state, the prediction value for the idle time is recalculated, and when the calculated value is less than the threshold, the timer is switched back to the active state of the busy waiting state. Is switched to.

In the deactivated state, when the user data packet reception occurs, the state is immediately switched to the activated state, and the timer is set to the idle time prediction value.

As mentioned above, although the present invention has been described by way of limited embodiments and drawings, the technical idea of the present invention is not limited thereto, and a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the present invention pertains, Various modifications and variations may be made without departing from the scope of the appended claims.

1 is a flowchart illustrating a packet processing process of a home network system according to the prior art.

2 is a block diagram of an active / inactive selection device of a home network system according to the present invention;

3 is a flowchart illustrating a packet processing process of a home network system according to the present invention;

4 is a diagram illustrating a process of correcting idle time according to the present invention;

(a) is a conceptual diagram showing that a prediction error of the next idle time calculated occurs when an idle time longer than the average value occurs during idle time stored in the timer and is estimated.

(b) is a conceptual diagram showing a method of correcting the prediction error of (a).

* Description of the symbols for the main parts of the drawings *

10: packet receiving unit 20: proxy processing unit

30: active / inactive switching unit 40: timer

50: application processing unit D1 ~ Dn: device

Claims (13)

In the active / inactive selection device installed to implement the always-on service of the home network system, An application processor for operating a device connected to the home network system; A packet receiver which receives an external packet signal; Receives a packet from the packet receiver and handles a packet according to the received packet type, processes a packet that does not require a response and a packet whose response pattern is determined, and stores other user data packets in the application processor. Proxy processing unit for transmitting to; An active / inactive switching unit that changes the state of the application processing unit according to a processing result of the proxy processing unit; And a timer for predicting and storing an idle time in which the application processor is maintained in an inactive state. And the timer stores a pattern of accumulated idle time and predicts a next idle time based on the pattern of accumulated idle time. delete The method of claim 1, And the timer calculates an average of the accumulated idle time and the most recent idle time at a ratio of 50:50 to predict the next idle time. The method of claim 3, wherein And the timer is set to the predicted idle time when a packet is received in the state in which the application processing unit is maintained in an inactive state and is switched to the active state. The method of claim 4, wherein And the timer further includes a threshold of idle time which is a reference for determining to switch the application processor to an inactive state when the application processor is in an active state. The method of claim 5, And the timer initializes the timer and recalculates the idle time when the predicted idle time is less than a constant multiple of the threshold. In the active / inactive selection method applied to implement always-on services of a home network system, Transmitting an external packet signal to a packet receiver; Receiving the packet from the packet receiver and processing the packet according to the type of the received packet; Switching the application processing unit for controlling the operation of the device to an active and inactive state according to the packet processing result; And predicting and storing an idle time during which the application processor is maintained in an inactive state. The predicting and storing the idle time may include storing a pattern of accumulated idle time and predicting a next idle time based on the accumulated idle time pattern. Way. The method of claim 7, wherein Receiving a packet from the packet receiver and processing the packet according to the type of the received packet processes a packet that does not require a response and a packet whose response pattern is determined, and sends other user data packets to the application processor. The method of selecting the active / inactive of the home network system, characterized in that the step of transmitting. delete The method of claim 7, wherein Predicting and storing the idle time is the step of predicting the next idle time by calculating the average of the accumulated idle time and the most recent idle time at a ratio of 50:50. Way. The method of claim 10, The estimating and storing the idle time may include setting the predicted idle time when the application processing unit is switched to the active state after receiving the packet while the application processor is in an inactive state. Active / Inactive Selection Method. The method of claim 11, The estimating and storing the idle time may further include setting a threshold value of idle time which is a reference for determining to switch the application processor to an inactive state when the application processor is in an active state. Method for selection of active / inactive activity. 13. The method of claim 12, The predicting and storing the idle time may include initializing and recalculating the predicted idle time when the predicted idle time is less than a constant multiple of the threshold. Way.

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