KR20020069997A - Apparatus and method for reducing current in mobile terminal using bluetooth - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE: An apparatus and a method for saving a current in a mobile communication terminal in which a Bluetooth is installed are provided to reduce the consumption of the current according to the unnecessary driving of power amplifiers by checking a non-transmission interval without a transmission packet and blocking a driving power of a Bluetooth transmitting unit. CONSTITUTION: A transmitting unit(40) transmits a packet by a time division type. A control unit(60) blocks a driving power provided from the transmitting unit(40) during a non-transmission interval without a transmission packet when it is notified that the transmission packet does not exist from a modem control unit of a terminal. The transmitting unit(40) has a BBA(BaseBand) unit(41) for coding the transmission data from the control unit(60), generating a packet, and converting the generated packet into a baseband analog signal, an RF(Radio Frequency) unit(42) for modulating the output signal from the BBA unit(41) by a frequency hopping type, and a power amplifier(43) for amplifying the output signal from the RF unit(42).

Description

Current saving device and method in mobile communication terminal equipped with Bluetooth {APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR REDUCING CURRENT IN MOBILE TERMINAL USING BLUETOOTH}

The present invention relates to a next generation wireless interface Bluetooth, and more particularly, to an apparatus and method for reducing current in a Bluetooth mode in a mobile communication terminal equipped with Bluetooth.

Recently, with the emergence of various information communication devices such as PCs, mobile phones, and PDAs, the necessity of interconnection between these devices has recently increased, and new data communication specifications have emerged. Bluetooth (developed code name) announced by five companies, including Ericsson in Sweden, IBM and Intel in the US, Nokia in Finland, and Toshiba in Japan, has been mainly involved in cable connection (wired) and infrared communication. It is characterized by the fact that the data communication period has been realized wirelessly using radio waves.

The Bluetooth aims to realize wireless data communication with a maximum data transmission rate of 1 Mbps and a maximum transmission distance of 10 m. 1Mbps is a transmission rate that can be realized relatively easily and at low cost using 2.4G㎐ of Industrial Scientific Medical (ISM) band, which is available without a user's license. The transmission distance of 10m is decided based on the determination that the transmission distance between the device carried by the user in the office and the device installed in the desk is sufficient. In addition, Bluetooth adopts CVSD (Continuous Variable Slope Delta Modulation), which is a voice encoding method, to be used for voice transmission as well as text data transmission. In addition, it uses cryptographic techniques to keep communications secret. In addition, a big feature of Bluetooth is that it can communicate with other information communication devices in a bag or pocket.

As described above, Bluetooth has been commercialized in the future due to many advantages, and thus, specific implementation plans or power saving problems have been raised when it is installed in a portable terminal. That is, when Bluetooth is mounted on the terminal, additional power consumption for Bluetooth occurs than when only the existing CDMA part exists. Since the terminal is driven by a limited resource (battery), the technique of increasing the use time with a limited resource is most important. In other words, there is a need for a method for reducing power consumption by blue pitches in the terminal as much as possible.

Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide an apparatus and method for turning off the driving source of a transmitter when there is no transmission in a Bluetooth device.

Another object of the present invention is to provide an apparatus and method for turning off the driving power of a transmitter when there is no transmission in a Bluetooth mode in a mobile communication terminal equipped with Bluetooth.

It is still another object of the present invention to provide an apparatus and method for reducing current consumption by turning off transmissions when there is no packet transmitted from a Bluetooth device using a TDD scheme.

According to a first aspect of the present invention for achieving the above objects, if the Bluetooth device mounted on the mobile communication terminal is informed that there is no transmission packet from the transmitter for transmitting the packet in a time division manner and the modem control unit of the terminal And a control unit which cuts off the driving power provided to the transmission unit during the time period in which the transmission packet is absent.

Here, the transmitting unit generates a packet by coding the transmission data from the control unit, the baseband unit for converting the generated packet into a baseband analog signal, and the output signal of the baseband unit rotor by the frequency hopping method And a radio unit for frequency-modulated output, and an amplifier for amplifying the output signal from the radio unit.

On the other hand, according to the second aspect of the present invention, if the mobile communication terminal device equipped with a blue pitcher detects a non-transmission section without a packet transmission in the Bluetooth mode, the Bluetooth transmission unit requests enforcement of the Bluetooth transmission unit during the non-transmission section. Modem control unit for outputting a control signal to the control unit, and receiving the control signal from the modem control unit, characterized in that it comprises the Bluetooth to cut off the drive power provided to the transmitter during the non-transmission section.

1 is a block diagram of a mobile communication terminal equipped with a Bluetooth according to an embodiment of the present invention.

2 is a view showing a detailed configuration of the blue pitcher of the configuration of FIG.

3 is a diagram illustrating a control procedure for gating a Bluetooth transmitter according to an embodiment of the present invention.

4 illustrates a piconet, which is a minimum unit of Bluetooth devices.

5 is a view illustrating a structure in which one mast Bluetooth and a slave Bluetooth transmit and receive signals in a TDD scheme.

Hereinafter, exemplary embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings. In describing the present invention, if it is determined that the detailed description of the related known function or configuration may unnecessarily obscure the subject matter of the present invention, the detailed description thereof will be omitted.

Basically, when the terminal operates in the Bluetooth mode, the present invention detects a non-transmission section (or non-packet slot section) in the baseband modem section (or mobile station modem) and turns off the Bluetooth transmission section. off). This saves power and can extend standby time (or talk time).

1 is a block diagram of a mobile communication terminal equipped with Bluetooth according to an embodiment of the present invention. 1 is composed of a modem control unit 10, a CDMA unit 20 and Bluetooth 30. The following description will focus on transmission.

Referring to FIG. 1, the modem controller 10 includes a controller (CPU), a channel encoder, a channel decoder, a channel decoder, a vocoder, and the like. Although not shown, a memory, a keypad, a display, a codec, a battery, and the like are connected to the modem controller 10. The modem controller 10 channel-codes the source coded data through the codec, and spreads and modulates the channel-coded data.

The CDMA unit 20 converts the spread-modulated data from the modem controller 10 into an analog signal, passes through a low pass band filter, extracts a low band signal, and modulates the low band signal into an intermediate frequency (IF) signal. The intermediate frequency signal is automatically adjusted by a gain through an automatic gain controller, and the gain-adjusted signal is multiplied by a carrier to modulate the radio frequency signal. The radio frequency signal is band-pass filtered through a band pass filter, and the filtered signal is amplified and transmitted through an antenna.

Referring to FIG. 2, the Bluetooth 30 includes a base unit 41, a radio unit 42, and a power amplifier 43, a transmitter 40, a receiver 50 that processes a received signal, and a controller that performs overall processing of the blue pitcher 30. (CPU) 60 and a switch 70 for separating the transmission and reception signals.

The controller 60 is responsible for interfacing with the modem controller 10 and controls the overall link processing such as connection establishment and disconnection. On the other hand, the control unit 60 includes a memory for storing a driving program and temporary data generated during program execution, and a power supply unit for supplying power to each component of the Bluetooth 30. The baseband unit 41 generates a packet by coding and ciphering the transmission data from the control unit 60, and converts the generated packet into a baseband analog signal and outputs the packet. The radio unit 42 modulates the output from the baseband unit 41 by a frequency hopping method, and filters and outputs the modulated signal. The power amplifier 43 amplifies the output from the radio unit 42 and transmits it through the switch 70 and the antenna. Here, the signal transmitted through the antenna is transmitted in the slot determined according to the TDMA / TDD scheme.

The present invention is to prevent the unnecessary current is consumed by cutting off the power provided to the transmitter 40 in the Bluetooth 30 during the slot period without transmission. Basically, each component of the Bluetooth 30 is driven with the power provided from the controller 60. Thus, for signal transmission, power is supplied to each of the components (baseband portion, radio portion, and power amplifier) configured in the transmitter, and conventionally a method of continuously supplying power to the components during the Bluetooth mode. Was used. The Bluetooth 30 transmits a packet in a slot manner. Therefore, supplying power to a non-transmission section (Non-packet slot section) in which there is no packet to transmit is unnecessary current consumption. Accordingly, the present invention cuts power consumption by cutting off the power provided in the above configurations during the non-transmission section in which there are no packets to transmit.

3 illustrates a control procedure according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Referring to FIG. 3, the modem controller 10 checks whether the Bluetooth mode is established in step 301. The mode check can be checked by setting a predetermined flag. If the Bluetooth mode is not checked, the modem controller 10 proceeds to step 309 and performs the corresponding mode. If the Bluetooth mode is checked, the modem controller 10 proceeds to step 303 to check whether a non-transmission section without a transmission packet is detected. do.

If the non-transmission section is not detected, the modem controller 10 continuously checks whether the non-transmission section is detected. On the other hand, if the non-transmission section is detected, the modem controller 10 proceeds to step 305 to provide a gating operation signal to the controller 60 of the Bluetooth 30. Then, the controller 60 cuts off the power provided to the transmitter 40. In particular, the current consumption is reduced by shutting off the power of the large current consumption, the driving amplifier, and the frequency synthesizer. In operation 307, the modem controller 10 determines whether the Bluetooth mode is terminated. If the end of the Bluetooth mode is detected, the process ends. Otherwise, the process returns to step 303 to continuously detect the non-transmission section.

Basically, the present invention corresponds to a case where the terminal operates in the Bluetooth mode. At this time, when the modem controller (or mobile station modem) detects a non-transmission section (Non-packet slot section), it provides a control signal (or a gating operation signal) for gating the transmitter 40 of the Bluetooth 30 to the Bluetooth 30. .

For example, the Bluetooth 30 uses a Gaussian shaped binary frequency shift keying (FSK) scheme by applying a TDMA / TDD scheme. Therefore, a plurality of Bluetooths divide the time to perform communication by the TDMA scheme. In this case, all the Bluetooth are identical in hardware, but depending on the situation, it takes a state called a master or a slave. In the accompanying drawings, Fig. 4 shows a piconet, which is their minimum unit. Bluetooth, which first started communication, becomes a master, and performs hopping pattern synchronization with slaves in the piconet. In other words, the communication within the piconet is managed by the master.

In addition, the TDD scheme communicates with each other using a slot structure of 625 ms. As an example, a structure of one master and a slave is illustrated in FIG. 5. Basically, 1 hopping slot (625ms = 1 / 1600ch) is transmitted and received by TDD (Time division duplex). At this time, when a slot in which a packet is not transmitted is detected, the power is provided to the transmitter 40 of the corresponding Bluetooth (master or slave) to gate off the transmission.

Meanwhile, in the detailed description of the present invention, specific embodiments have been described, but various modifications are possible without departing from the scope of the present invention. Therefore, the scope of the present invention should not be limited to the described embodiments, but should be determined not only by the scope of the following claims, but also by those equivalent to the scope of the claims.

As described above, when the terminal operates in the Bluetooth mode, the present invention checks the non-transmission section without a transmission packet and cuts off the driving power of the Bluetooth transmission unit, thereby reducing the current consumption due to unnecessary driving of the power amplifiers with high current consumption. There is an advantage to reduce. This provides an advantage that can increase the battery life of the terminal soon.

Claims (5)

In the Bluetooth device mounted on the mobile communication terminal, A transmitter for transmitting packets in a time division manner; And a control unit which cuts off the driving power provided to the transmitting unit during the time period in which the transmitting packet is absent when the modem control unit of the terminal is informed that there is no transmission packet. The method of claim 1, wherein the transmitting unit A baseband unit for generating a packet by coding transmission data from the control unit and converting the generated packet into a baseband analog signal; A radio unit which modulates and outputs the output signal of the baseband rotor by a frequency hopping method; And an amplifier for power amplifying the output signal from the radio unit. In the mobile communication terminal device equipped with a blue pitcher, A modem controller for outputting a control signal for requesting enforcement of a Bluetooth transmitter during the non-transmission period by the Bluetooth when detecting a non-transmission period without packet transmission in the Bluetooth mode; And receiving the control signal from the modem controller, wherein the Bluetooth cuts off the driving power provided to the transmitter during the non-transmission period. In the method for controlling the Bluetooth transmitter in a mobile communication terminal equipped with Bluetooth, Check whether it's in Bluetooth mode, Checking a non-transmission section without packet transmission in the Bluetooth mode; And if the non-transmission section is detected, outputting a control signal for requesting enforcement of the transmission unit to the Bluetooth. The method of claim 4, wherein And when the Bluetooth receives the control signal, cutting off the driving power provided to the transmitter.