WO2007067035A1

WO2007067035A1 - Method and service node for determining relevant user terminals which are located in a specific geographic area

Info

Publication number: WO2007067035A1
Application number: PCT/NL2005/050068
Authority: WO
Inventors: Jozef Hendricus Petrus Hendriks; Erik Jan Reitsma
Original assignee: Telefonaktiebolaget Lm Ericsson (Publ)
Priority date: 2005-12-08
Filing date: 2005-12-08
Publication date: 2007-06-14
Also published as: BRPI0520731A2; EP1961250A1

Abstract

14 SUMMARY Service node for a telecommunication network and method of determining a set of interesting user terminals (21) which are located in a geographical area (30;31). First, relevant cells (1-10) are determined which are at least partially overlapping the geographical area. Then, a set of relevant user terminals is formed with all user terminals being located in the relevant cells. Next, the location of each of the relevant user terminals is determined. The relevant user terminals (21) which location is in the geographical area are added to the set of interesting user terminals. In an embodiment 10 only those user terminals that are in the relevant cells are looked at which have a specific role, such as police or friend.

Description

METHOD AND SERVICE NODE FOR DETERMING RELEVANT USERTERMINALS WHICH ARE LOCATED IN A SPECIFIC GEOGRAPHIC AREA

Field of the invention

The present invention relates to a method of determining relevant user terminals which are located in a specific geographical area. In a further aspect, the present invention relates to a service node for a telecommunication network arranged to execute the method. Prior art

Nowadays cellular phone networks comprise a plurality of cells intended to fully cover a particular service area. Each cell is serviced by a base station connected to one or more service nodes. Besides service nodes, the network may comprise, or be connected to, application nodes. These application nodes comprise a server running an application. An example of such an application is the "Find the nearest gas station" service. The application receives the location of the mobile user terminal and looks up the gas stations in the vicinity of the user terminal. Locations of the gas stations are then communicated to the user terminal via the cellular phone network. The application already knows the exact location of the gas stations since they are stored on for example a database connected to the server.

Sometimes, an application needs to find specific mobile user terminals. For example, if a particular authority (e.g. the police) wants to send an SMS message to all user terminal that are/were in a specific area at a given time. The locations of the mobile user terminals are not fixed as was the case with the gas stations mentioned above. This means that the application cannot use a map on which the relevant locations are indicated. Since each base station is arranged to monitor the ID' s of all mobile user terminals present in the corresponding cell, it is able to transmit this data to an application server requesting it. In this way, a geographical 'map' may be construed by the application server comprising one or more cells. However, it is not possible to find only specific user terminals that are located in an arbitrarily construed

geographical area. Summary of the invention

A goal of the present invention is to provide a method which makes it possible for an application to find only those user terminals of a telecommunication network which are located in an arbitrarily construed geographical area.

This is achieved by a method of determining a set of relevant user terminals in a telecommunication network which are located in a geographical area not being an area corresponding to one or more cells of the telecommunication network, comprising: a) determining relevant cells of the network which are at least partially overlapping the geographical area;

b) adding user terminals to a set of potentially relevant user terminals if they are located in the relevant cells;

c) determine a location of each of the potentially relevant user terminals;

d) adding the potentially relevant user terminals to the set of relevant user terminals, if they are located in the geographical area.

For some applications the search for relevant users is only relevant within a particular area. The invention makes sure that only the relevant users are searched for before a list of relevant users is sent to the application. The invention also makes sure that as much cells as possible will be excluded before doing the actual location requests. This will result in fewer location requests and therefore less power and network resource usage. With the invention user terminal can be found that are located in an arbitrarily area, such as a golf course, a city, a mall etc.

In an embodiment, after the determining of relevant cells, the relevant cells are queried for user data associated data with user terminals. A user terminal is only added to the set of potentially relevant user terminals if the associated user data matches a set of criteria. The advantage of this embodiment is that it combines searching for users in a specific area with users within a specific group (or with specific properties, which is the same problem). The embodiment is an iterative mechanism in which in each step both location aspects and group membership are taken into consideration, which is more efficient than considering either aspect by itself. As a consequence less position queries needed.

In a further aspect, the invention relates to service node, such as a context management server, for a telecommunication network comprising a set of cells for servicing user terminals, in which the service node is connectable to an application server arranged to execute an application for determining a set of interesting user terminals which are located in a geographical area not being an area corresponding to one or more cells of the telecommunication network. The service node is connectable to a cell map server arranged to obtain information from the telecommunication network for determining for each of the set of cells whether they overlap with the geographical area, and one or more query servers arranged to query a cell for user data associated with the user terminals being serviced in the cell, the service node being arranged for:

a) determining relevant cells of the network which are at least partially overlapping the geographical area;

b) adding user terminals to a set of relevant user terminals if they are located in the relevant cells;

c) determine a location of each of the relevant user terminals;

The query server may for example be a cell registry server or a mobile positioning server.

In an even further aspect, the present invention relates to a computer program product comprising executable code, which when loaded in a processing system of a service node for a telecommunication network, provides the service node with the ability to perform embodiments of the present method.

The present method may be extended to include fixed user terminals, which are e.g. connected to a fixed network, such as the public switched telephone network. In a further embodiment, a user terminal comprises a terminal with a fixed and known location. As the location is fixed and known, the distance to a point of interest may be calculated and included in the present method embodiments.

In the embodiments of the present invention, a search may be performed for finding a user terminal having a specific role, e.g. a user terminal in the possession of medical staff or other emergency personnel. The determination whether a user terminal is a specific user terminal satisfying a set of criteria may be implemented in various manners. In one particular embodiment, a user terminal in a cell is added to the set of found user terminals if the associated user data obtained from the cell matches a set of criteria. By applying the criteria to the data obtained from a cell query, it is assured that the most up to date information is used for determining a specific user terminal.

Short description of drawings

The present invention will be discussed in more detail below, using a number of exemplary embodiments, with reference to the attached drawings, in which:

Fig. 1 shows a simplified diagram of a telecommunication network connected to an application server and a database server;

Fig. 2 shows an exemplary situation sketch for an application of a first embodiment of the present method;

Fig. 3 shows a further exemplary situation sketch for an application of a second embodiment of the present method, and

Fig. 4 is an interaction diagram showing the interaction between the different functional entities according to an embodiment.

Detailed description of exemplary embodiments

In figure 1, a simplified diagram of a telecommunication network is shown in which embodiments of the present invention may be applied, using a mobile telephony network as an exemplary embodiment. The telecommunication network is e.g. a GSM network, in which network cells 22 provide a cellular type of geographical coverage area, in which a number of user terminals 21 (e.g. mobile telephones) can be serviced. Each network cell 2 is serviced by a base station 24 which is connected to a data communication network 16, such as a GPRS network or a UMTS network. An application server 11 (e.g. a personal computer or server computer) runs an application, and interfaces with a service node 20 of the telecommunication network, referred to as context management server 20. The context management server 20 is arranged to obtain data regarding the mobile user terminals 21. The context management server 20 may comprise one (or more) processors and associated memory, and is able to execute a software program stored in that memory or provided on a computer program product loadable in the context management server 20, as is known to the skilled person. The context management server 20 is connected to cell various other servers 12-14 of the telecommunications network. A cell map server 12 is arranged to provide information regarding the exact geographical area covered by each cell of the network, as well as details on which cells are overlapping, and how much area is overlapping. A cell registry server 13 is arranged to determine for each cell which potentially relevant user terminals 21 are in that cell. Which user terminal 21 is a really relevant user terminal 21 for a specific application, can be determined in various manners, as will be explained below. The cell registry server 13 can determine for each cell, which users are in the cell 22. This can be achieved, when the cell registry function 13 receives cell updates for all relevant mobile users by the network or by the user terminals 21. This means that the cell registry server 13 is always up to date with cell id of each user.

A mobile positioning server 14 is arranged to provide positional information in relation to the user terminals 21, e.g. in geographic coordinates. The mobile positioning server 14 may use one of several possibilities to obtain positional information from the user terminals 21. E.g. radio triangulation may be used to determine a position using a number of cell base stations. Alternatively, the positional information may be obtained directly from the user terminal 21. The user terminal 21 may be equipped with a location device (e.g. a GPS unit), or a location may be input by the user. The servers 12-14 are functional units and may be separate units in the telecommunication network, but may also be implemented in combination in one or two units in the

telecommunication network. Please note that the cell registry server 13 and the mobile positioning server 14 are also referred to as query servers.

The application server 11 is able to retrieve information from a database server

15 which is arranged to store user profile information associated with the user terminals 21. Also the context management server 20 may be arranged to retrieve information from the database 15.

The cell map server 12 contains information about the cell topology. According to an embodiment, the cell map server 12 can tell the context management server 20 what cells 22 are intersecting with a given area, as will be explained in more detail with reference to figure 2. The given area can be retrieved from the application via the application server 11 or is given by the end-user requesting the service through the application server 11. The mobile positioning server 14 is consulted by the context management server 20 in case the most accurate location of potentially relevant users is required. The mobile positioning server 14 may determine through the user's profile what type location determination is allowed to be used (e.g., GPS, base station, etc.) Figure 2 schematically shows a part of the network coverage area of the telecommunication network of figure 1. A set of cells 1-10 are shown, each represented by a circular coverage area (of which some overlap). The skilled person will understand that other forms of coverage area for each cell may exist in reality, determined by cell antenna position and antenna environment. An area of interest for the embodiments of the present invention is indicated by reference numeral 30, of which the geographical contour is assumed to be known. The geographical location of the area of interest 30 is fixed during execution of the present method, but it may also be associated with a (moving) mobile user terminal. The area of interest 30 may for example be a specific area around the actual location of the mobile user terminal at the time of the start of the search according to an embodiment of the present invention. A number of user terminals A-J are present in the coverage area of cells 1-10, in the locations indicated.

The application running on the application server 11 may be arranged to execute a service, in which one or more user terminals 21 must be found which are located in a geographical area, such as the area of interest 30 shown in figure 2. According to an embodiment, the application sends a search request to the context management server 20 for any particular user terminal in the area of interest 30. In an embodiment, only the user terminals are requested that match some specific contextual information such as, role, identity, which is retrieved from the database sever 15 containing the user profile information. The context management server 20 can use this contextual information in order to find the particular user(s) matching this information from the database server 15. The application may specify the area of interest 30 in which users must be found in several ways. Areas of interest may be defined in several different ways. Firstly, the geographical area may be identified by way of an identifier, which is known to both the context management server 20 and the application on the application server 11. The application may then indicate the area 30 by sending the corresponding identifier along with the request. Alternatively, the application may specify the area 30 by describing the boundary of the area as a concatenation of contour points. The application can specify that it wants to search users within this boundary. The geographical area 30 may also be specified by an image file, such as a bitmap. This bitmap comprises pixels wherein pixels that are part of the area 30 have a different colour than those which are not part of the area 30. The image file may also comprise additional coordinate information which corresponds to a previously agreed (global) map or coordinate system. In an embodiment, such an image file is obtained by taking (part of) the agreed map and colouring the area of interest. The image file can be the result of colouring the geographical area 30 in a transparent image file and placing the transparent image file correctly (i.e. aligned) over the previously agreed map. The context management server 20 can then determine whether a location is in the area of interest 30 by calculating the position of the location on the previously agreed map, and then determine whether the corresponding point in the image file is coloured. Alternatively, the application may specify that it is interested in the inverse of any of the areas as specified in the manners mentioned above. It should be noted that any combination of one or more specifications mentioned in above can be provided. Furthermore it should be clear that the

geographical area 30 can also be provided by a user terminal initiating the application. In this case the geographical area can be transmitted by the user terminal to the application server 11 or to the cell map server 12.

Once the context management server 20 has received a request form the application server 11, it will request all relevant cells at the cell map server 12 that are at least partially covering the geographical area 30. Relevant cells are cells that are at least partially covered by the geographical area 30. In figure 2 these cells are cells 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8. The context manager server 20 sends a request to the cell registry server to obtain the users in these cells. The context management server determines which of the found users in these cells match the contextual information criteria by querying the user profile database. Presume that in figure 2 all users are potentially relevant. This means that based on the contextual information the users A-E will be in the list. In order to find out which users in these cells are actually in the geographical area 30 (i.e. relevant instead of potentially relevant), the context management server 20 must be able to determine the exact location of these potentially relevant users. The location of these particular users can be provided to the context management server 20 by the mobile positioning server 14 in the mobile network on request. Eventually this will result in user B being located in the predefined area .

In an embodiment of the present invention, the application sends a search request to the context management server 20 for any particular user terminal 21 within a certain distance from a point of interest (see alarm bell 32 in figure 3). The context

management server 20 will send a request to the cell map server 12 of what cells overlap with the geographical area 31 defined by the location of the point of interest 32 and the distance (i.e. the radius of the area). The cell map server 12 will return the cells 4, 5, 6, 8 and 9. After that a request for users in these relevant cells 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 to the cell registry server 13, will result in a list of users A-E. Then, for each of these users A- E it must be determined whether they are located in the geographical area 31. The location of these particular users can be provided to the context management server 20 by the mobile positioning server 14 on request. This eventually results in users B, C and D.

The point of interest 22 may be a person in need of urgent medical care, and the relevant user terminal 21 may then be a user terminal 21 which is known to be in the possession of a medical practitioner on duty. In order to be able to provide the necessary medical help as soon as possible, of course nearby user terminals 21 most be known (and contacted).

Other types of relevant or specific user terminals 21 may be defined, using a number of context criteria (i.e. specific user terminal roles). E.g. groups of user terminals 21 may be defined for medical emergency personnel, fire emergency personnel, police personnel, etc. The criteria may be determined at the start of the present method, e.g. when the application has established which criteria are to be used in a specific case. The cell registry server 13 may be arranged to determine which user terminal 21 in which cell 1-10 is a specific user terminal 21. This can be executed continuously in the cell registry server 13, but may also be executed only after having received user terminal data in response to a cell data request. Most telecommunication networks will be capable of providing such information, although different types of networks might perform this function differently. Several alternatives exist: Cell changes are communicated to a central point in the network where a mapping from cell to users is maintained. In an alternative embodiment, base stations in each cell of a cellular telephony network maintain a list of the users they service, which base stations can be queried by the cell registry server 13. In an even further alternative, a broadcast channel in the telecommunication network is used to page all user terminals in a particular cell 1-10 to provide the information requested by the cell registry server 13.

The last alternative is applicable to GSM networks. In phase 2 of the GSM standard the SMS Cell Broadcast is defined that enables sending an SMS to all users in a particular area (GSM 03.41 and GSM 03.49). Users can selectively accept or reject the message based on the message class. A specific emergency class can be used that is typically ignored by normal users. Note that there is a different cost for each of the alternatives. In the first alternative there is a continuous cost because each cell change must be communicated. The second alternative does not have any additional cost since the base stations already have the right information. The third alternative has a more variable cost for each time that a cell is queried.

Because each user terminal 21 is in a cell 1-10, the user terminal's approximate location is known (the coverage area of that cell), and thus for each cell 1-10 a distance range to the point of interest 22 can be calculated. Only cells 1-10 that comprise potentially relevant (or specific) user terminals 21 are evaluated. When the point of interest 32 resides in one or more cells 1-10 that comprise relevant user terminals 21, it will be determined for all of these cells 1-10 which potentially relevant user terminal 21 are in the geographical area 30, 31 (i.e. are really relevant).

In an embodiment, the context management server 20 retrieves the static context criteria that apply for the relevant mobile users from the database server 15. The database server 15 is responsible for keeping the user profile information. The user profile information is used by the context management server 20 as filter criteria for determining potentially relevant users. There may exist a management interface on the database server 15. An operator can then modify the user profile information. The user profile information could also be updated dynamically based on measured attributes of the users. For example, the user may carry a heartbeat monitoring device that is connected through some mobile technology to the context management server, and this heartbeat monitoring device may send regular updates of the user's heartbeat. The user's profile in the database server 15 may be updated according to these messages.

The geographical area 30 mentioned above can be any arbitrarily shaped area. An example of such an area is a golf course. A golf player may enter the golf course and for example wants to know whether any of his friends is on the golf course without trying each and everyone. Therefore he may send a request to an application with the applicable criteria (i.e., specification of the area that is covered by the golf course (which may be a map of the golf course, or a reference to a map that is previously stored on the context manager server 20 or in the database server 15), group identifier, etc.). Depending on the criteria given by the requestor the application finds the applicable person. In this case he may find one of his golf friends somewhere else on the golf course. Figure 4 is an interaction diagram showing the interaction between the different functional entities for the golf course example. A golf player using a user terminal 21 request an application to find a friend on the golf course, see arrow 40. The application server 11 on which the application is running, receives this request and asks the context management server 20 to get the relevant user terminals, see arrow 42. The application receives parameters from the application such as the golf course id and the specific role or group (i.e. "friend"). Next, the context management server 20 asks the cell map server 12 to get the relevant cells, see arrow 44. In the mean time, a golf friend using a terminal 21' send automatic updates 46 to the cell registry server 13. The context management server 20 will request the cell registry server 13 to get all users that are in the relevant cells, see arrow 48. Next, the context management server 20 will filter (see arrow 50) the potentially relevant users, by looking at which users are a friend of the golf player. The exact location of these users is then determined by asking the cell registry server 13 for the exact location(s), see arrow 52. The cell registry server 13 will get the exact location form the user terminal 21 'of the golf friend, see arrow 54.

Finally, the context management server 20 will determine whether the location of the golf friend is really in the geographical location (i.e. the golf course), see arrow 56. As was mentioned above, instead of an golf course id, it is also possible that the user terminal 21 sends a map of the golf course to the context management server 20.

The embodiments according to the present invention are able to deal with the fact that potentially relevant user terminals 21 can have a fixed location and are not necessarily mobile user terminals 21. For this it is necessary that the cell query function as discussed above in relation to the various embodiments, returns data associated with potentially relevant user terminals 21 with a fixed location as well as relevant mobile user terminals 21. This can e.g. be implemented by assigning a fixed user terminal 21 to a list of relevant user terminals 21 of the cell covering the geographical location of the fixed user terminal 21.

The embodiments of the present invention are based on the assumption that it is possible to query which user terminals 21 reside in a particular cell 1-10. Most networks will be capable of providing such information, although different types of networks might perform this iunction differently. Several alternatives exist as described above. The present invention has been explained above with reference to a number of exemplar embodiments. As will be apparent to the person skilled in the art, various modifications and amendments can be made without departing from the scope of the present invention, as defined in the appended claims.

Claims

1. Method of determining a set of relevant user terminals (21 ) in a

telecommunication network which are located in a geographical area (3O;31) not being an area corresponding to one or more cells of said telecommunication network, comprising:

a) determining relevant cells (1-10) of the network which are at least partially overlapping said geographical area;

b) adding user terminals (21) to a set of potentially relevant user terminals if they are located in said relevant cells;

c) determine a location of each of said potentially relevant user terminals;

d) adding said potentially relevant user terminals (21) to said set of relevant user terminals, if they are located in said geographical area.

2. Method according to claim 1 , wherein said geographical area is described by a plurality of geographical points describing the contour of said geographical area.

3. Method according to claim 1, wherein said geographical area is described by a bitmap.

4. Method according to claim 3, wherein said bitmap comprises a plurality of pixels wherein pixels that are positioned in said geographical area have another colour than those not being in said geographical area.

5. Method according to claim 1, wherein said geographical area is described by a geographical centre and a radius.

6. Method according to any one of the preceding claims, in which a user terminal (21) comprises a terminal with a fixed and known location.

7. Method according to any one of the preceding claims, wherein after said determining of relevant cells, said method comprises querying said relevant cells for user data associated data with user terminals (21), and wherein a user terminal (21) is only added to said set of potentially relevant user terminals if said associated user data matches a set of criteria.

8. Service node (20) for a telecommunication network comprising a set of cells (1- 10) for servicing user terminals (21), in which the service node (20) is connectable to an application server (11) arranged to execute an application for determining a set of relevant user terminals (21) which are located in a geographical area not being an area corresponding to one or more cells of said telecommunication network,

the service node (20) being connectable to a cell map server (12) arranged to obtain information from the telecommunication network for determining for each of the set of cells (1-10) whether they overlap with said geographical area, and one or more query servers (13, 14) arranged to query a cell (1-10) for user data associated with the user terminals (21) being serviced in the cell (1-10),

the service node (20) being arranged for:

a) determining relevant cells ( 1 - 10) of the network which are at least partially overlapping said geographical area;

c) determine a location of each of said potentially relevant user terminals;

9. Computer program product comprising executable code, which when loaded in a processing system of a service node (20) for a telecommunication network, provides the service node (20) with the ability to perform the method according to any one of claims 1 through 7.