WO2015172436A1

WO2015172436A1 - Terminal mutual-discovery method and device

Info

Publication number: WO2015172436A1
Application number: PCT/CN2014/083296
Authority: WO
Inventors: 曾慧鹏; 张百胜
Original assignee: 中兴通讯股份有限公司
Priority date: 2014-05-15
Filing date: 2014-07-30
Publication date: 2015-11-19
Also published as: CN104093137A; CN104093137B

Abstract

Disclosed in an embodiment of the present invention are a terminal mutual-discovery method and device, the method comprising: a WiFi hot spot acquires the terminal information of terminals within the coverage of the hot spot (S101); according to the obtained terminal information, searching a database to determine whether a contact person relationship exists between the terminals (S102); if yes, then notifying at least one terminal having the contact person relationship, and carrying the terminal information having the contact person relationships (S103). Via the WiFi scanning function of a terminal, the embodiment of the present invention enables the terminal to discover nearby smart terminals having relationships therewith in an offline scenario, thus finding nearby friends.

Description

Terminal mutual discovery method and device

The invention relates to a smart terminal including an Android (Android) smart phone, a wireless fidelity (Wifi) hotspot, and a cloud server. The smart terminal generally has an Internet access capability and a WiFi function, and the Wifi hotspot has a certain coverage. The scope can be scanned by the intelligent terminal through the 802.11 protocol Probe Request frame, and the hotspot also broadcasts a beacon frame. The cloud server is an Internet-based connection commonly used in mobile Internet. A background server that provides cloud data storage and mining services. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION Currently, Android smartphones have become very popular, and such terminals have functions such as a call, a Global Positioning System (GPS), a mobile data service, and a WiFi. Contact discovery services built through the Internet and GPS positioning, such as WeChat radar services, are also commonly available on smart terminals.

Due to the mobile data service tariff, many users will turn off the mobile data service after going out. The external WiFi access requires complicated configuration steps, so the Internet is a prerequisite that is not easy to obtain.

Current GPS technologies include satellite positioning, base station positioning, and WiFi positioning, each with the following limitations:

Satellite positioning: indoor positioning such as shopping malls, cafes, etc. cannot use satellite positioning;

Base station positioning: The base station signal is required to be good, and the positioning accuracy is too poor, and the coverage is too large;

WiFi positioning: It also needs to rely on the Internet connection.

In summary, there is currently no technology that can compensate for the discovery of other friends' technologies in offline scenes such as shopping malls and cafes. At the current shopping malls, the wireless WiFi hotspots in the cafes are very popular. Summary of the invention The embodiments of the present invention provide a terminal mutual discovery method and device, which can better solve the terminal mutual discovery problem.

A terminal mutual discovery method includes:

The wireless hotspot obtains terminal information of the terminal within its coverage;

Searching, in the database, whether there is a contact relationship between the terminals according to the obtained terminal information;

If there is a contact relationship, at least one terminal having the contact relationship is notified, and the terminal information having the contact relationship is carried.

Preferably, the step of the wireless hotspot acquiring the terminal information of the terminal in its coverage includes:

The wireless hotspot listening to the terminal broadcast frame sent by the terminal;

Parsing the detected terminal broadcast frame to obtain the terminal information of the terminal.

Preferably, the terminal information includes a mutual discovery service identifier and a terminal MAC address, and after the wireless hotspot acquires terminal information of the terminal within the coverage of the wireless hotspot, the wireless hotspot determines the location according to the mutual discovery service identifier. The terminal is a mutual discovery service terminal, and the terminal MAC address is written into the MAC address pool.

Preferably, the step of searching for a contact relationship between the terminals in the database according to the obtained terminal information includes:

The wireless hotspot sends the terminal MAC address in the MAC address pool to the server;

The server uses the contact relationship list between the terminals pre-stored in the database to find the terminal MAC address of the contact relationship in the received terminal MAC address, and sends the MAC address of the contact relationship to the wireless hotspot.

A terminal mutual discovery method includes:

The terminal sends a terminal broadcast frame carrying the terminal information;

The terminal information having the contact relationship found by the wireless hotspot according to the terminal information that is heard is received.

Preferably, the above method further includes: The terminal searches for the contact information corresponding to the terminal information in the local database, and displays the found contact information.

A terminal mutual discovery device, applied to a wireless hotspot, includes:

a terminal information acquiring module, configured to acquire terminal information of a terminal in a coverage area of the wireless hotspot;

a contact relationship finding module, configured to: in the database, look up whether there is a contact relationship between the terminals according to the acquired terminal information;

The contact relationship notification module is configured to notify the at least one terminal having the contact relationship when the contact relationship exists, and carry the terminal information having the contact relationship.

Preferably, the terminal information acquiring module is configured to: listen to a terminal broadcast frame sent by the terminal, and parse the intercepted terminal broadcast frame to obtain terminal information of the terminal.

Preferably, the terminal information includes a mutual discovery service identifier and a terminal MAC address, and the terminal information acquiring module is further configured to: after acquiring terminal information of the terminal in the coverage of the wireless hotspot, according to the mutual discovery service identifier And determining that the terminal is a mutual discovery service terminal, and writing the terminal MAC address to the MAC address pool.

Preferably, the contact relationship searching module sends the terminal MAC address in the MAC address pool to the server, and receives the terminal MAC address of the contact relationship that is found and sent by the server, where the server uses the database. A list of contact relationships between the pre-stored terminals, and finds the terminal MAC address of the contact relationship in the received terminal MAC address.

A terminal mutual discovery device, applied to a WIFI terminal, includes:

a sending module, configured to send a terminal broadcast frame carrying the terminal information;

a receiving module, configured to receive terminal information with a contact relationship that is found by the wireless hotspot according to the detected terminal information;

Preferably, the above apparatus further includes:

The query module is configured to search for contact information corresponding to the terminal information in the local database, and display the found contact information.

Embodiments of the present invention also provide a computer program, including program instructions, when the program instructions are When the wireless hotspot is executed, the wireless hotspot is enabled to perform the above method.

The embodiment of the invention further provides a computer program, comprising program instructions, when the program instruction is executed by the terminal, so that the terminal can execute the above method.

Embodiments of the present invention also provide a carrier carrying the above computer program.

The embodiments of the present invention can implement mutual discovery of terminals in a coverage area by using a wireless hotspot. 1 is a first schematic block diagram of a method for mutual discovery of a terminal according to an embodiment of the present invention;

2 is a second schematic block diagram of a method for discovering a mutual terminal of a terminal according to an embodiment of the present invention;

3 is a first block diagram of a terminal mutual discovery device according to an embodiment of the present invention;

4 is a second block diagram of a terminal mutual discovery device according to an embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 5 is a schematic diagram of a wireless mutual connection-based offline mutual discovery mechanism implemented by multiple Android terminals according to an embodiment of the present invention; FIG.

6 is a flowchart of establishing a local (contact) database according to an embodiment of the present invention; FIG. 7 is a schematic diagram of a framework for implementing a mutual discovery system based on a wireless hotspot without a network according to an embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 8 is a flowchart of mutual discovery when there is no network connection according to an embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 9 is a schematic diagram of a terminal contact discovery interface according to an embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 10 is a schematic diagram of a format of a probe request frame for adding a flag flag according to an embodiment of the present invention; FIG.

FIG. 11 is a schematic diagram of a beacon beacon frame data format extended by adding a Flag flag bit and a MAC address according to an embodiment of the present invention. BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION Hereinafter, preferred embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings, In the case of no conflict, the features in the embodiments and the embodiments in the present application may be arbitrarily combined with each other. FIG. 1 is a first schematic block diagram of a method for mutual discovery of a terminal according to an embodiment of the present invention. As shown in FIG. 1 , the method includes:

Step S101: The wireless hotspot acquires terminal information of the terminal within its coverage.

In this step, the wireless hotspot listens to the terminal broadcast frame sent by the terminal, and parses the intercepted terminal broadcast frame to obtain the terminal information of the terminal. The terminal information includes a mutual discovery service identifier and a terminal media access control (MAC) address. The wireless hotspot determines that the terminal is a mutual discovery service terminal according to the mutual discovery service flag, and writes the terminal MAC address into the MAC address pool.

Step S102: Search for a contact relationship between the terminals in the database according to the obtained terminal information.

In this step, the wireless hotspot sends the terminal MAC address in the MAC address pool to the server, and the server uses the contact relationship list between the terminals pre-stored in the database to find the terminal with the contact relationship in the received terminal MAC address. The MAC address, and sends the MAC address of the contact relationship to the wireless hotspot.

Step S103: If there is a contact relationship, notify at least one terminal having a contact relationship, and carry terminal information having a contact relationship.

For example, the wireless hotspot listening terminal A sends a terminal broadcast frame carrying the terminal MAC address in a broadcast form, and finds the terminal B with the contact relationship in the wireless hotspot coverage in the database according to the terminal MAC address of the terminal A. Terminal MAC address and terminal C's terminal MAC address. At this time, the wireless hotspot broadcasts the found terminal MAC address of the terminal B and the terminal MAC address of the terminal C in the optional extension field of the hotspot broadcast frame, so that the terminal A receives and displays the corresponding contact information. The wireless hotspot may also broadcast the terminal MAC address of the terminal A in an optional extension field of the hotspot broadcast frame, so that the terminal B and/or the terminal C receive and display the contact information corresponding to the terminal A.

2 is a second schematic block diagram of a method for discovering a mutual terminal of a terminal according to an embodiment of the present invention. As shown in FIG. 2, the steps include:

Step S201: The terminal sends a terminal broadcast frame carrying the terminal information. Step S202: Receive terminal information with a contact relationship that is found by the wireless hotspot according to the detected terminal information.

Preferably, after the step S202, the method further includes:

Step S203: The terminal searches for the contact information corresponding to the terminal information in the local database, and displays the found contact information.

The terminal information includes a mutual discovery service flag and a terminal MAC address.

The terminal local database pre-stores the correspondence between the contact information and the terminal MAC address. After the terminal obtains the MAC address of the terminal with the contact relationship, the terminal sends the acquired terminal MAC address with the contact relationship to the contact application through the middle layer service. The contact application finds the corresponding contact information through the correspondence between the pre-stored contact information and the terminal MAC address, and reminds the terminal user through the user interface.

FIG. 3 is a first block diagram of a terminal mutual discovery device according to an embodiment of the present invention. As shown in FIG. 3, the terminal information acquiring module 31, the contact relationship searching module 32, and the contact relationship notification module 33 are included. among them:

The terminal information acquiring module 31 acquires the terminal information of the terminal in the wireless hotspot coverage area. Preferably, the terminal information acquiring module 31 listens to the terminal broadcast frame sent by the terminal, and parses the intercepted terminal broadcast frame. Obtaining terminal information of the terminal, where the terminal information includes a mutual discovery service identifier and a terminal MAC address, and the wireless hotspot determines, according to the mutual discovery service identifier, that the terminal is a mutual discovery service terminal, that is, the terminal supports or has mutual Discover the service function and write the terminal MAC address to the MAC address pool.

The contact relationship searching module 32 searches the database for the contact relationship between the terminals according to the obtained terminal information. Preferably, the contact relationship searching module 32 sets the terminal MAC in the MAC address pool. The address is sent to the server, and the server uses the contact relationship list between the terminals pre-stored in the database to find the terminal MAC address of the contact relationship in the received terminal MAC address, and finds the existing contact relationship. The terminal MAC address is sent to the contact relationship lookup module 32.

The contact relationship notification module 33 notifies the at least one terminal having the contact relationship when the contact relationship exists, and carries the terminal information having the contact relationship. 4 is a second block diagram of a terminal mutual discovery device according to an embodiment of the present invention. As shown in FIG. 4, the method includes: a sending module 41, a receiving module 42, and a query module 43, where:

The transmitting module 41 transmits a terminal broadcast frame carrying the terminal information.

The receiving module 42 receives the terminal information with the contact relationship found by the wireless hotspot according to the detected terminal information.

The query module 43 searches the local database for contact information corresponding to the terminal information, and displays the found contact information.

The transmitting module 41 transmits a terminal broadcast frame carrying the mutual discovery service flag and the terminal MAC address. After the terminal information acquiring module 31 detects the broadcast frame of the terminal, determining, according to the mutual discovery service flag in the broadcast frame of the terminal, that the terminal has or supports the terminal mutual discovery service function, and writes the terminal MAC address. MAC address pool. The contact relationship searching module 31 sends the terminal MAC address in the MAC address pool to the server, and the server selects the contact person in the terminal MAC address sent by the wireless hotspot by using the contact relationship list between the terminals prestored in the database. The terminal MAC address of the relationship, and the selected terminal MAC address with the contact relationship is sent to the wireless hotspot. The contact relationship notification module 33 broadcasts the found terminal MAC address having the contact relationship to notify at least one end user having the contact relationship. After the receiving module 42 receives the terminal MAC address with the contact relationship, the query module 43 determines the corresponding contact information by querying the local database, and reminds the terminal user of the contact person located in the vicinity through the user interface.

The embodiment of the invention further provides a computer program, comprising program instructions, when the program instruction is executed by a wireless hotspot, so that the wireless hotspot can perform the above method.

At present, similar technologies include WiFi positioning and base station positioning, but have the disadvantages of relying on network and poor positioning accuracy. The solution to the problem in the embodiment of the present invention is complementary to the current technology, and can fill a function gap.

The following is an example of an application scenario in which the terminal is not connected to WIFI and there is no GPS and no Internet. The embodiment of the present invention will be further described with reference to FIG.

In this embodiment, the WiFi scanning function of the terminal can be used to discover a terminal that is related to itself in a scenario where the WiFi is not connected and there is no Internet and no GPS, so as to find nearby friends (ie, the terminal offline mode realizes terminal mutual discovery), such as A plurality of Android terminals shown in FIG. 5 implement a schematic diagram of an offline mutual discovery mechanism based on WiFi connectionless.

The program mainly includes the following contents:

Terminal module

A. Contact application: Responsible for UI display, contact management, and mutual discovery service control.

B. Contact Cloud Interface: Responsible for interacting with the cloud server, registering personal information and MAC addresses, and querying contact information and MAC addresses.

C. Contact database: Store contacts and MAC addresses.

D. WiFi module transformation: Broadcast frames carry mutual discovery service support information.

2. Cloud server module

A. Contact cloud server: Implement contact registration query and MAC address filtering.

B. Cloud Database: Stores all contact information using cloud services.

3. Wireless hotspot module

A. WiFi module modification: It can identify the broadcast frame of the client supporting the mutual discovery service and record its MAC address. Support for broadcasting the filtered MAC address.

B. MAC address filtering module: and the cloud server query the list of MAC addresses suitable for mutual discovery in the MAC address pool.

The implementation process is described in the following two stages:

1) The terminal holder obtains the contact MAC address data.

This process can be carried out at any time during the use of the network with the support of the terminal. It is guaranteed to build a database with a contact list, mobile phone number and MAC address locally, and support offline query.

2) Look for other contacts within the coverage of the store's hotspots in the absence of a network-free GPS connection.

This process does not require a WiFi connection without the support of the Internet and location system, and only discovers other contacts within the same WiFi hotspot coverage through the 802.11 scan discovery protocol. People.

Implementation and its modules:

1. The terminal holder obtains the contact MAC address data.

1.1, contact registration: As shown in Figure 6, the local (contact) database is established. The contact person is connected to the cloud server in the environment with the network at home, and the identity and the MAC address obtained from the WiFI driver. (Step 1) Initiate registration with the contact cloud server (step 24). The contact cloud server records the user identity and MAC address.

1.2. Find other contacts: The terminal provides the contact ID (phone number), queries the other party's MAC address, and the cloud service synchronizes their contact status. (Step 3456)

1.3. Save contact MAC address: The terminal receives the MAC address of the cloud contact and saves the contact's MAC address list to the local database. (Step 78)

2, search for contacts offline

2.1, as shown in Figure 7, the wireless hotspot-based mutual discovery system implementation framework diagram shown in Figure 7 and the networkless mutual discovery flow diagram shown in Figure 8, after the contact module enables the mutual discovery mode, the WiFi is turned on. The terminal side carries the mutual discovery service flag and the MAC address in the scan (request) frame through the WiFi broadcast (step 1). The specific implementation method of this step is as shown in FIG. 10, which is a schematic diagram of a probe request frame format for adding a flag flag, and 802.11 defines The mobile terminal uses the Probe Request frame to detect which 802.11 network is currently covered by the request frame. The default Probe Request is already attached with the MAC address of the local device. Here, only the service flag needs to be added, as shown in Figure 10, in the probe Request. Adding the F flag indicates that the terminal has a mutual discovery service.

2.2. The wireless hotspot determines that the mutual discovery service terminal exists, and writes its MAC address into the MAC address pool (step 2). The MAC address pool collects the Probe Request frame with the F flag bit received in the most recent period (such as 5 minutes). MAC address in . Because the number of MAC addresses that can be collected is high, you may not be able to carry all the data in the MAC address pool when you broadcast the beacon frame. Therefore, you must filter and filter the data in the entire MAC address pool.

2.3. The filtering process is implemented by the background service of the wireless hotspot, and the background service sends the detected MAC address pool to the cloud server according to a certain frequency (for example, 5 minutes) (step 3), and the latter searches the contact cloud database for the MAC list. There is a contact relationship MAC address and MAC The MAC addresses of the friends in the address pool are filtered out. The resulting MAC address will be very small and can be fed back to the wireless hotspot background service (step 4) for broadcast.

2.4. The wireless hotspot puts the filtered MAC address set into the optional extension field of the beacon frame. The layout is as shown in FIG. 11 and the beaconframe data format of the extended flag and the MAC address is extended to ensure the broadcast frame is compatible. Ordinary WiFi terminal and the frame size is not too large. (Step 567)

2.5. The wireless terminal receives the hotspot broadcast frame through the WiFi chip, and collects the MAC address set in the upper frame data, and then reports the result to the contact application through the middle layer service such as wpa-supplicant and WifiService (step 8), the contact application. The program can know which contacts are nearby by querying the local database (step 9), and remind the end user through the UI, as shown in FIG.

2.6 After the end user finds a nearby contact, he can directly call the contact through the interface of Figure 9.

The embodiment of the present invention utilizes the WiFi scanning function of the intelligent terminal to discover an intelligent terminal that is related to itself in an offline scenario, thereby finding a nearby friend.

In summary, the embodiment of the present invention can utilize the WiFi function of the WiFi device to realize mutual discovery of the terminal and find nearby contacts.

Although the embodiments of the present invention have been described in detail above, the present invention is not limited thereto, and modifications of the principles of the embodiments of the present invention should be understood as falling within the scope of the present invention.

One of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that all or a portion of the above steps may be accomplished by a program instructing the associated hardware, such as a read-only memory, a magnetic disk, or an optical disk. Alternatively, all or part of the steps of the above embodiments may also be implemented using one or more integrated circuits. Correspondingly, each module/unit in the above embodiment may be implemented in the form of hardware or in the form of a software function module. The invention is not limited to any specific form of combination of hardware and software.

Industrial Applicability The embodiments of the present invention can implement mutual discovery of terminals in a coverage area through a wireless hotspot.

Claims

Claim

1. A terminal mutual discovery method, comprising:

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the step of the wireless hotspot acquiring the terminal information of the terminal in its coverage area comprises:

The method according to claim 1 or 2, wherein the terminal information comprises a mutual discovery service indicator and a terminal medium access control (MAC) address, and the terminal of the terminal within the coverage area is obtained by the wireless hotspot. After the step of information, the wireless hotspot determines, according to the mutual discovery service identifier, that the terminal is a mutual discovery service terminal, and writes the terminal MAC address into a MAC address pool.

The method according to claim 3, wherein the step of searching for a contact relationship between the terminals in the database according to the obtained terminal information includes:

The wireless hotspot sends the terminal MAC address in the MAC address pool to the server; the wireless hotspot receives the terminal MAC address of the contact relationship sent by the server, and the terminal MAC address of the contact relationship is the server It is found using the contact relationship list between terminals pre-stored in its database.

5. A terminal mutual discovery method, including:

The terminal receives the terminal information of the contact relationship that the wireless hotspot finds according to the detected terminal information.

6. The method of claim 5, further comprising:

The terminal searches for a contact information corresponding to the terminal information in a local database, and The found contact information is displayed.

7. A terminal mutual discovery device, applied to a wireless hotspot, comprising:

a terminal information acquiring module, configured to: acquire terminal information of a terminal in a coverage area of the wireless hotspot;

a contact relationship finding module, configured to: find, according to the obtained terminal information, whether a contact relationship exists between the terminals in a database;

The contact relationship notification module is configured to: notify the at least one terminal having the contact relationship when the contact relationship exists, and carry the terminal information having the contact relationship.

The device according to claim 7, wherein the terminal information acquiring module is configured to: listen to a terminal broadcast frame sent by the terminal, and parse the intercepted terminal broadcast frame to obtain terminal information of the terminal.

The device according to claim 7 or 8, wherein the terminal information comprises a mutual discovery service indicator and a terminal medium access control (MAC) address, and the terminal information acquiring module is further configured to: acquire wireless hotspot coverage After the terminal information of the terminal in the range, according to the mutual discovery service flag, it is determined that the terminal is a mutual discovery service terminal, and the terminal MAC address is written into the MAC address pool.

10. The device according to claim 9, wherein the contact relationship searching module is configured to: send a terminal MAC address in a MAC address pool to a server, and receive an existing contact relationship that is found and sent by the server. The terminal MAC address, wherein the terminal MAC address in which the contact relationship exists is found by the server using a contact relationship list between terminals pre-stored in its database.

A terminal mutual discovery device, which is applied to a wireless fidelity (WIFI) terminal, comprising: a sending module, configured to: send a terminal broadcast frame carrying terminal information; and a receiving module, configured to: receive a wireless hotspot according to The terminal information having the contact relationship found by the detected terminal information.

12. The apparatus according to claim 11, further comprising:

The query module is configured to: find the contact information corresponding to the terminal information in the local database, and display the found contact information.

13. A computer program comprising program instructions which, when executed by a wireless hotspot, cause the wireless hotspot to perform the method of any of claims 1-4.

14. A carrier carrying the computer program of claim 13.

15. A computer program comprising program instructions which, when executed by a terminal, cause the terminal to perform the method of any of claims 5-6.

16. A carrier carrying the computer program of claim 15.