Spatiotemporal annotation of data packets in wireless networks
Contents
1. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS FIG 1 is a diagram illustrating an exemplary location aware wireless network according to an embodiment of the present invention FIG 2 is a diagram illustrating several exemplary ways by which a network element in a location aware wireless net work can attain location awareness according to an embodi ment of the present invention FIG 3 is a diagram illustrating an exemplary methodology for processing information streams produced by end comput ing devices that are transmitted over a network having at least one network element such as the networks of FIGS 1 and 2 according to an embodiment of the present invention and FIG 4 is a diagram illustrating an exemplary apparatus for processing information streams produced by end computing devices that are transmitted over a network having at least one network element such as the networks of FIGS 1 and 2 according to an embodiment of the present invention DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS As described above in order to create open smart loca tion enabled applications the dependencies on existing loca tion infrastructures need to be reduced Accordingly pro vided herein are techniques that allow location based services to exist independently of associating with a location infrastructure that must be queried for location information The present techniques allow data streams to become spa tiotemporally rich even when their sour2. 10 US 8 913 552 B2 9 minutes is an example of when a piece of spatial information can be written To be a little more specific by way of example only there might be various authors of permission conditions For example end users may specify content permissions what location information can be added operators may also provide operation permissions when a location metadata can be added in an information stream A LANE device will aggregate these permissions and when it performs step 312 the LANE device will decide what needs to be altered with regard to spatial metadata Thus the permission rules con sulted in step 310 above may contain an aggregation of permission rules from end users and operators that determine the spatial information provided and the frequency by which the information is provided in the sensory streams The above exemplary embodiments have considered the embedding or updating of permissible spatial information in information streams passing through a network element such as network elements 104 or 204 employing techniques such as DPI In an entirely analogous manner permissible tempo ral information can also be embedded or updated in informa tion streams A network element such as network elements 104 or 204 can employ a technique such as DPI to inspect a passing packet for temporal information If temporal infor mation is missing a timestamp may be entered based on the time indicated by the internal c
3. infrastructure can provide value add by estimating device location and creating location metadata for the device Traditional cellular base stations can estimate device location using transmit power Femto cells e g in homes or pico cells e g in malls and WiFi hotspots e g in airports may be configured with location information This information can be stored in a network provider s infra structure and become available through a location service to end user applications The location service can query the infrastructure of the provider to retrieve the location of the source or an estimate of it that can then be used to customize the location service response to the user for example where a user uses her mobile telephone to connect to a location service provider say to search for movie theaters and movies near her location The location service provider queries the cellular company provider for the location of the user The cellular company provides this information using for example the cell tower information that the mobile telephone was connected to assisted GPS etc As can be seen from this example the location data and hence location services are intimately tied to the cellular company provider who will also typically own the relation ship with the end user In other words data of spatiotemporal significance become tied to a location infrastructure and the utility of these data is restricted by the access rights to t
4. oe 370 392 2008 0090589 Al 4 2008 Mikan et 1 455 456 1 2008 0125959 Al 5 2008 Doherty et al 2008 0187137 Al 8 2008 Nikander et al 2008 0305747 Al 12 2008 Aaron 2009 0054074 Al 2 2009 Aaron 2009 0104919 Al 4 2009 Heater et al 2009 0248833 Al 10 2009 Frazier 2010 0048222 Al 2 2010 Gracieux Continued OTHER PUBLICATIONS Calcev G et al Method and algorithm for near real time cellular network optimization using antenna tilt control IPcom No 1PCOM000132037D Nov 29 2005 Continued Primary Examiner Brandon Renner Assistant Examiner Faisal Choudhury 74 Attorney Agent or Firm Preston Young Michael J Chang LLC 57 ABSTRACT Techniques for annotating data packets with time and or loca tion information in wireless networks are provided In one aspect a method for processing information streams pro duced by end computing devices that are transmitted over a wireless network having at least one network element is pro vided The method includes the following steps Data packets which originate from the end computing devices and are received by the network element are inspected for spatiotem poral metadata Spatiotemporal metadata is inserted into the data packets and the data packets are transmitted ifthe step of inspecting the data packets reveals that the data packets are missing spatiotemporal metadata Otherwise the data packets are transmitted if the step of inspecting the data packets reveals t
5. 4 Apparatus 400 can be configured to serve as one or more of the network elements in network 100 Apparatus 400 comprises a computer system 410 and removable media 450 Computer system 410 comprises a processor device 420 a network interface 425 a memory 430 a media interface 435 and an optional display 440 Network interface 425 allows computer system 410 to connect to a network while media interface 435 allows computer system 410 to interact with media such as a hard drive or removable media 450 As is known in the art the methods and apparatus discussed herein may be distributed as an article of manufacture that itself comprises a machine readable medium containing one or more programs which when executed implement embodi ments of the present invention For instance when apparatus 400 is configured to implement one or more of the steps of methodology 300 the machine readable medium may contain 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 10 a program configured to inspect data packets which originate from the end computing devices and are received by the network element for spatiotemporal metadata and insert spa tiotemporal metadata into the data packets and transmit the data packets if the step of inspecting the data packets reveals that the data packets are missing spatiotemporal metadata otherwise transmit the data packets if the step of inspecting the data packets reveals that spatiotemporal metadata is alrea
6. ISBN 9783540770879 2007 Kim M et al Web Services framework for geo spatial services Springer Verlag 4th International Workshop on Web and Wireless Geographical Information Systems W2GIS 2004 Goyang Korea Lecture Notes in Computer Science Lect Notes Comput Sci Ger many 2005 3428 1 13 ISSN 0302 9743 Sep 19 2005 cited by examiner US 8 913 552 B2 Sheet 1 of 3 Dec 16 2014 U S Patent 901 SNOLLVOIdd 05 VLYQYLN 05 ONY AOI 6 NV 701 6 001 ft NOLLVAYOINI 5 30 01 6 YOSN3S an LN3NdINV3 wasn 01 COL US 8 913 552 B2 Sheet 2 of 3 Dec 16 2014 U S Patent 9 0 9NO1 4W Sd9 SSUV lt V Iddy ONY 6 JOIAId NI INO dP NOLVAYOANI NOLLVJOT ANV YAOWIY 08 gt NOLVNILSJO gt 400 dIZ XINO YALNA lt ZAX NOILLYNILSJQ 41 gt NOLLVENSLINOD AOVALYd YOSNAS SNOLLWOMdd T 5 10 055 111815 NIVA OF 593800 41 NOLLVAN LANOJ TVnNYN 140d 9NINOONI 140d 9NIO91n0 38150 7 r 13S 11945039 6 NIVYN Of 012 SS 5 NOILYYNOIINOY 9NO1 1V1 Sd9 f asvaviva dgoa9 602 C U S Patent Dec 16 2014 Sheet3 of3 US 8 913 552 B2 FIG 8 300 INSTALL LOC AWARE PHASE I NETWORK ELEMENT LANE LANE OPERATION PHASE 1 FIG 4 400 TO FRO
7. M COMPUTER NETWORK US 8 913 552 B2 1 SPATIOTEMPORAL ANNOTATION OF DATA PACKETS IN WIRELESS NETWORKS FIELD OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to location aware wireless networks and more particularly to techniques for annotating data packets with time and or location information in such wireless networks BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION Enhanced availability of mobile Internet has resulted in a hyper growth of smart mobile applications Many of these applications make use of spatially annotated information to provide a broad set of location aware services such as finding the nearest Greek restaurant or the nearest cheap gas station targeted mobile advertisements and so on The intro duction of smart sensing enabling technologies can only hasten the growth trend of mobile applications Many of these mobile applications can benefit if their application in the mobile device or the application server in the cloud or datacenter is aware of the spatial coordinates of the information sources Ifthe source device is equipped with a global positioning system GPS it can attach geo coordi nate metadata to application sessions However possessing GPS may not always be possible due to form factors i e anything related to the form characteristics of an object such as shape size and weight cost reasons energy consumption etc or GPS may not be always operational e g in indoor environments Cellular network
8. P IP packet However the packet inspection may also include shallow packet inspection such as inspecting the TCP IP packet head ers to extract information that could be used later Upon inspection of the packet in step 310 the LANE consults the list of permission rules for the spatiotemporal metadata in the packet and makes a determination as to whether the packet contains permissible or impermissible spatiotemporal metadata As described above the LANE e g network element 104 may be configured directly by the user with the user s privacy guidelines and or the privacy guidelines may be set at other levels e g at the sensor Note that even if the data packet does contain spatiotemporal meta data the LANE may still consult the list of permission rules to determine whether supplying spatiotemporal metadata is permissible or impermissible In step 312 the LANE determines whether or not the data packet contains permissible spatiotemporal metadata If the packet contains permissible spatiotemporal metadata i e the data packet meets all of the privacy guidelines then the LANE transmits the packet out on an upstream port see FIG 2 The LANE then returns to waiting for a next packet from downstream and steps 306 312 are repeated On the other hand if the packet contains impermissible spatiotemporal metadata i e the data packet violates the privacy guide lines or if the packet contains insufficient or no spatiotem poral
9. and mapping it to a location Thus in this case embedding spatial metadata would be preferable In yet other cases a more powerful sensor may be equipped with a global positioning system GPS device and thus can also add its location along with the time of a sensed event such as the threshold crossing In this instance no additional spatial or temporal metadata is needed By way of example only network element 104 can be configured to examine the data that passes through it for example using DPI and ifnetwork element 104 finds location metadata missing incorrect existing location metadata and or 5 40 45 50 65 4 impermissible location metadata e g violating set privacy policies network element 104 can insert remove and or otherwise alter on the fly the estimated location informa tion of the source and or time data in the data stream The concept of altering data packets on the fly is well known to those of skill in the art By way of example only writing on the fly is commonly done in routers which can even alter information as a packet waits to be transmitted on an outgoing port The router may if necessary momentarily delay the transmission to perform this operation In FIG 1 end computing devices 102 e g user equip ment UE produce sensed information that is then con sumed by applications 106 As highlighted above the user equipment UE can include sensors A sensor can be a simple single
10. az United States Patent Agrawal et al US008913552B2 US 8 913 552 B2 Dec 16 2014 0 Patent No 45 Date of Patent 54 SPATIOTEMPORAL ANNOTATION OF DATA PACKETS IN WIRELESS NETWORKS 75 Inventors Dakshi Agrawal Monsey NY US Chatschik Bisdikian Chappaqua NY US 73 Assignee International Business Machines Corporation Armonk NY US Notice Subject to any disclaimer the term of this patent is extended or adjusted under 35 U S C 154 b by 382 days 21 22 Filed 65 US 2012 0188940 Al Int Cl HO4W 4 00 HOAL 29 08 HO4W 4 18 US Cl 51 52 Appl No 13 012 387 Jan 24 2011 Prior Publication Data Jul 26 2012 2009 01 2006 01 2009 01 CPC seins 11041 67 2819 2013 01 HO4W 4 185 USPC 58 USPC 2013 01 370 328 Field of Classification Search CPC vores H04W 8 12 H04W 64 00 370 328 See application file for complete search history 56 References Cited U S PATENT DOCUMENTS 7 203 752 B2 4 2007 7 437 158 B2 8 2002 0023123 Al 2 2002 2005 0278375 Al 12 2005 2006 0069681 A1 3 2006 2006 0126645 A1 6 2006 Rice et al Russell Madison Mitchko et al 707 104 1 Lauper Devarapalli et al 370 401 302 2006 0281437 Al 12 2006 Cook ee 455 404 2 2007 0067626 Al 3 2007 Louis Briancon et al 2007 0168524 Al 7 2007 Chao et al 2007 0286195 Al 12 2007 IInickletal
11. ble permission rules and transmit the data packets if the step of inspecting the data packets reveals that spatiotemporal metadata is already present in the data packets themselves wherein the user configurable permission rules further designate a granularity of spatiotemporal metadata inserted into the data packets depending on one or more of an origin of the data packets a destination of the data packets application to which the data packets relate time and date and wherein the insert and conform steps are performed only for application data carrying packets meant to be processed by end user applications 18 An article of manufacture for processing information streams produced by an application on end computing devices that are transmitted over a wireless network having at least one network element comprising a non transitory machine readable recordable medium containing one or more programs which when executed implement the steps of US 8 913 552 B2 13 inspecting on the fly data packets which originate from the end computing devices and are received by the network element for spatiotemporal metadata in the data packets themselves consulting user configurable permission rules that dictate 5 what spatiotemporal metadata is permissible and what spatiotemporal metadata is impermissible for the appli cation and inserting spatiotemporal metadata into the data packets themselves in accordance with the user configurable 10 permis
12. ces are unable to provide the necessary metadata information Further pro vided herein are techniques to manage the content of meta data added to satisfy end user preferences such as privacy levels According to the present techniques the embedding is performed by special network elements such as a WiFi base station a gateway a sensor network controller etc These network elements examine the traffic that passes through them for example using deep packet inspection DPI and if the network elements find location metadata missing the network elements insert on the fly the estimated location information of the source in the data stream FIG 1 for example is a diagram illustrating exemplary location aware network 100 Network 100 in this case a wireless network includes at least one end computing device i e user equipment UE 102 e g sensors mobile telephones personal digital assistants PDAs personal com puters laptop computers etc accessing internet based appli cations 106 though a network element s 104 such as by a US 8 913 552 B2 3 WiFi base station a gateway a sensor network controller and or a femto cell access point FAP located at a home of a user An apparatus that may serve as a network element 104 is provided in FIG 4 described below Information streams produced by the end computing devices are transmitted over network 100 As will be described in detail below according to the present teach
13. d him her such as friends where the user does not necessarily want them to know exactly where he she is but only that the user is in the area or in the same town If the user configures these customized privacy settings the user can specify specific destinations settings groups types of destinations etc For example auser may specify location expression granules such as full address or just street name or just zip code etc and origin and destination groups and then using the client application make statements of the form if data from group A are destined to group B allow location granule C This is how social networks manage privacy rules for their content FIG 3 is a diagram illustrating an exemplary methodology 300 for processing information streams produced by end computing devices that are transmitted over a network having at least one network element such as location aware network 100 described for example in conjunction with the descrip tion of FIGS 1 and 2 above Methodology 300 includes two phases a first phase set up of a LANE steps 302 and 304 and a second phase operation of the LANE steps 306 314 As describe above LANE stands for location aware network element i e a network element that has acquired location awareness see description of FIG 2 above With regard to the first phase in step 302 the LANE is installed A LANE such as network element 104 was described for example in conj
14. ded the address 30 Main Street as its location and network element 204 consults a geospatial service to obtain the GPS coordinates for 30 Main Street which network element 204 can use to replace or alternatively supplement the location information from the user This option may also be beneficial in situations where for example the user makes a mistake in inputting his her location and or when the location information the user inputs is not at the same granularity level as the set policy By way of example only if the privacy policy in place is set at a coarser granularity than what the user has inputted the LANE can substitute its GPS readings for that of the user s but at the correct privacy level This would require that the network element provide location information of its own i e aside from what the user provides The second method involves a bootstrap or assisted con figuration i e wherein a network provider remotely sets the geospatial information for network element 204 Namely a network service provider having a configuration server 210 of the network to which network element 204 is connected remotely configures network element 204 when network ele ment 204 powers on According to an exemplary embodi ment an operator from the network service provider con sults a geospatial database install db of the locations of its installed LANEs which may include actual subscribers home locations and configures eac
15. ds etc Spatial information may be treated in a very similar way and describe under what conditions the clauses see below spatial information may be revealed By way of example only a service subscriber may provide her privacy constraints to the network provider who then configures LANE accordingly as part of a service agreement the network provider has with the subscriber In FIG 2 the privacy configuration is shown as a collection of lt if then gt rules where represent conditions such as origin of a data packet destination of a data packet application to which a data packet relates time and date etc and lt then gt represent actions shown in italics in FIG 2 to be taken if the conditions are satisfied Example actions shown in FIG 2 include adjusting the location granularity embedded in the data stream such as just a zip code or just a street name or embed nothing or even remove any geospatial information that might exist in the data stream Using the example pro vided in FIG 2 the user can designate that if the destination of the data packet is XYZ then only zip code location infor mation should be inserted into the data stream On the other hand if the data packet destination is ABC then all location information is removed For example a user may share his her full location information to a localization service for summoning a taxi cab but only provide coarse location infor mation that allows people to fin
16. dy present in the data packets The machine readable medium may be a recordable medium e g floppy disks hard drive optical disks such as removable media 450 or memory cards or may be a trans mission medium e g a network comprising fiber optics the world wide web cables or a wireless channel using time division multiple access code division multiple access or other radio frequency channel Any medium known or developed that can store information suitable for use with a computer system may be used Processor device 420 can be configured to implement the methods steps and functions disclosed herein The memory 430 could be distributed or local and the processor device 420 could be distributed or singular The memory 430 could be implemented as an electrical magnetic or optical memory or any combination of these or other types of storage devices Moreover the term memory should be construed broadly enough to encompass any information able to be read from or written to an address in the addressable space accessed by processor device 420 With this definition information on a network accessible through network interface 425 is still within memory 430 because the processor device 420 can retrieve the information from the network It should be noted that each distributed processor that makes up processor device 420 generally contains its own addressable memory space It should also be noted that some or all of computer sys
17. e Internet applications 206 through a network element s in this case network element 204 As shown in FIG 2 network element 204 includes a downstream incoming port through which data packets arrive and an upstream outgoing port through which data packets are transmitted see below FIG 2 illustrates three non limiting exemplary methods by which network element 204 can acquire location aware ness A location aware network element is also referred to herein as a LANE The first method involves manual con figuration of network element 204 by the user Namely a user directly enters an address e g 30 Main Street through a LANE configuration console not shown e g through a web interface or a client application interfacing to the con figuration module of the LANE In the example shown in FIG 2 the user accesses the LANE configuration console through a web interface via the user s personal computer PC 208 Optionally network element 204 may consult with a geospatial service having a geospatial database GeoSp db 209 and substitute the address provided by the user with the GPS coordinates latitude lat and longitude long of the location or of an area containing the location increase the granularity Google maps is such a geospatial service With Google maps for example a user can provide an address and retrieve the GPS coordinates of the address For example as shown in FIG 2 the user has provi
18. e existing spatiotemporal metadata to con form with the user configurable permission rules 16 The method of claim 1 wherein the step of inspecting the data packets reveals that spatiotemporal metadata is already present in the data packets themselves and wherein the step of conforming the existing spatiotemporal metadata with the user configurable permission rules comprises the step of removing the existing spatiotemporal metadata to conform with the user configurable permission rules 17 A wireless network over which information streams produced by an application on end computing devices are transmitted the network having at least one network element comprising a memory and at least one processor device coupled to the memory operative to inspect on the fly data packets which originate from the end computing devices and are received by the net work element for spatiotemporal metadata in the data packets themselves consult user configurable permission rules that dictate what spatiotemporal metadata is permissible and what spatiotemporal metadata is impermissible for the application and insert spatiotemporal metadata into the data packets themselves in accordance with the user configurable permission rules and transmit the data packets if the step of inspecting the data packets reveals that the data packets are missing spatiotemporal metadata other wise conform existing spatiotemporal metadata with the user configura
19. h LANE remotely accordingly The third method involves self configuration e g GPS triangulation etc by network element 204 In the third method the LANE self configures using GPS triangulation information from other LANEs that already know their posi tion etc As highlighted above the user equipment may be config ured to obtain sensory information from stationary placed sensors e g placed in buildings on roads etc As shown in FIG 2 sensory measurements obtained from these sensors are part of the data stream to the network element Privacy guidelines may also be set at the sensor level Independently of how a LANE acquires its location infor mation end users may set conditions of when and how to US 8 913 552 B2 7 embed location information in data streams labeled Privacy configuration in FIG 2 In FIG 2 this is shown as part of the end user manual configuration of LANE but alternatives are possible As indicated in FIG 2 through some client appli cation running on e g a personal computer a user can manu ally enter type the location information e g 30 Main Street to be recorded in a sensory data stream Likewise privacy policies configuration may be entered manually by a user through a client application Such is the case with social network privacy rules when for example a social network user specifies who can see updates in personal status infor mation friends friends of frien
20. hat location infrastructure e g requires access to location infor mation from a cellular company provider Therefore the creation of open smart location enabled applications wherein the dependencies on existing location infrastructures are reduced would be desirable SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention provides techniques for annotating data packets with time and or location information in wireless networks In one aspect of the invention a method for pro 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 2 cessing information streams produced by end computing devices that are transmitted over a wireless network having at least one network element is provided The method includes the following steps Data packets which originate from the end computing devices and are received by the network ele ment are inspected for spatiotemporal metadata Spatiotem poral metadata is inserted into the data packets and the data packets are transmitted if the step of inspecting the data packets reveals that the data packets are missing spatiotem poral metadata Otherwise the data packets are transmitted if the step of inspecting the data packets reveals that spatiotem poral metadata is already present in the data packets A more complete understanding of the present invention as well as further features and advantages of the present invention will be obtained by reference to the following detailed description and drawings
21. hat spatiotemporal metadata is already present in the data packets 18 Claims 3 Drawing Sheets INSTALL LOC AWARE NETWORK ELEMENT LANE PHASE I lt PHASE I lt LANE WAITS FOR DATA PACKETS LANE OPERATION INSPECT DATA PACKET FOR SPATIOTEMPORAL METADATA CONSULT PERMISSION RULES CONTAIN PERMISSIBLE SPATIOTEMPORAL METADATA NO INSERT PERMISSIBLE SPATIOTEMPORAL METADATA US 8 913 552 B2 Page 2 56 References Cited U S PATENT DOCUMENTS 2011 0026464 Al 2 2011 Chen etal wo 370 328 2011 0078287 Al 3 2011 Pacella et al 709 219 2011 0080843 Al 4 2011 Casey etal wu 370 252 2011 0161427 Al 6 2011 Fortin etal ww 709 206 2011 0246866 Al 10 2011 Abajian et al 715 206 2011 0302308 Al 12 2011 Prodan et al s 709 225 2012 0083289 Al 4 2012 Lietal 455 456 1 2012 0096110 Al 4 2012 Sadovsky etal 709 213 OTHER PUBLICATIONS Choi O H et al A Design of Location Information Management System in Positioning Systems IEEE Computer Society Interna tional Conference on Convergence Information Technology ICCIT 2007 Article No 4420246 pp 114 120 DOI 10 1109 ICCIT 2007 254 Jan 1 2007 Agosti M et al An Architecture for Sharing Metadata Among Geographically Distributed Archives Springer Verlag First Inter national DELOS Conference Pisa Italy Digital Libraries R amp D LNCS 4877 pp 56 65 ISSN 0302 9743 eISSN 1611 3349
22. ings the network elements examine the information streams that pass therethrough for example using deep packet inspection DPI and if the network ele ments find location and or temporal metadata missing from application data carrying packets the network elements insert on the fly the estimated location and or time infor mation e g spatial temporal and or spatiotemporal meta data of the source in the information stream The concept of deep packet inspection by network elements with capabilities to read data packets including payload is well known to those of skill in the art and thus is not described further herein The information stream may also be referred to herein as data streams with the understanding that the terms may be used interchangeably As noted earlier the insertion or replace ment of the spatiotemporal information in data packets is done only to application data carrying packets Depending on the application context there may not be a need to insert spatiotemporal information to data packets such as system management and control packets set up connection packets etc not meant to be seen and processed by end user appli cations In the example shown in FIG 1 there are two flows of data a first flow and a second flow The first data flow indicated by dashed arrows involves end computing devices that do not embed location or time information in the data stream These end computing devices can include u
23. ion information from a third party such as a cellular company The second aspect is allowing data streams to become spatiotemporally rich even when their sources are unable to provide the necessary metadata information Again with reference to the description of FIG 1 presented above the present techniques provide for embedding spatiotemporal metadata to a data stream by an entity other than the source of the stream Serving as a surrogate of the source for the pur pose of enriching the data stream with spatiotemporal meta data spatiotemporal metadata becomes available to applica tions and services even when the source is unable to supply the required information The third aspect is managing the content of metadata added to satisfy end user preferences such as privacy levels Again with reference to the description of FIG 1 presented above the present techniques provide for using configurable permission lists describing the allowable information for embedding that are consulted prior to embed ding any metadata to the data stream FIG 2 is a diagram illustrating some exemplary ways by which a network element in a location aware network such as wireless network 100 of FIG 1 described above can attain 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 6 location awareness As described above the present loca tion aware network includes user equipment UE not shown accessing Internet based applications in this cas
24. lement 104 identifies missing or non complying i e impermissible location information in a data packet flow network element 104 can generate a brand new data packet to the same desti nation that includes the updated information assuming that it also clears any non compliant information Alternatively in another exemplary embodiment whenever network element 104 identifies missing or non complying i e impermis sible location information network element 104 replaces the data packet with the missing or non complying i e imper missible information with one that contains the allowable location information and is otherwise identical to the original packet The implementation of both of these functions in a DPI network element would be apparent to one of skill in the art As highlighted above the present techniques address sev eral important aspects of spatiotemporal data transfer The first aspect is being able to allow location based services to exist independently of associating with a location infrastruc ture that must be queried for location information With ref erence to the description of FIG 1 presented above the present techniques provide for the embedding of spatiotem poral metadata directly in the data e g sensory data stream This would satisfy the first aspect as applications and services can now extract the required spatiotemporal information directly from the data stream without requiring querying for locat
25. lock of the network element A user may configure the formatting details of the time for example to provide both time and date information or only time or configure the time granularity to be in minutes sec onds milliseconds etc Note that contrary to spatial infor mation time information can be in general more reliably estimated by a recipient application by simply using its own local clock Hence providing rules for temporal privacy may be less crucial than in the case of spatial information None theless the same techniques employed for providing permis sion rules such as using a browser application on a PC con nected to the configuration module of a network element can also be used to provide permission rules for temporal infor mation used to configure rules for when to write and how to write i e format time information Turning now to FIG 4 a block diagram is shown of an apparatus 400 for implementing one or more of the method ologies presented herein By way of example only apparatus 400 can be configured to implement one or more of the steps of methodology 300 of FIG 3 for processing information streams produced by end computing devices that are trans mitted over a wireless network having at least one network element such as location aware network 100 described in conjunction with the description of FIGS 1 and 2 As high lighted above network 100 includes at least one network element e g network element 10
26. metadata at all then in step 314 the LANE inserts embeds allowable permissible spatiotemporal metadata in the packet accordingly and transmits the packet out an upstream port see FIG 2 Steps 306 312 are then repeated While packet inspection may be performed at each incom ing packet for example as in methodology 300 embedding of spatiotemporal metadata may occur only as often or as fre quent as necessary For example the LANE may embed permissible spatiotemporal metadata only once per source destination flow identified by a common TCP IP address port source and destination pair or over a given interval of time e g once every 10 minutes Or as a result of DPI the LANE may embed permissible spatiotemporal metadata once per application session or over a given interval of time e g once every 10 minutes for packets that appear to be part of the same application session In this case the step of insert permissible spatiotemporal metadata is preceded by a deter mination of whether embedding is necessary for reasons such as the aforementioned flow or session rules It is notable that in step 312 the term contain permissible spatiotemporal metadata can be interpreted quite generically based on what permissible is Permissible will include both the granularity of spatial information and also when the infor mation can be permitted to be written Hence the example above of writing a specific piece of information every
27. oral metadata otherwise conforming existing spatiotemporal metadata with the user configurable permission rules and transmitting the data packets if the step of inspecting the data packets US 8 913 552 B2 11 reveals that spatiotemporal metadata is already present in the data packets themselves wherein the user configurable permission rules further designate a granularity of spatiotemporal metadata inserted into the data packets depending on one or more of an origin of the data packets a destination of the data packets application to which the data packets relate time and date and wherein the steps of inserting and conforming are performed only for application data carrying packets meant to be processed by end user applications 2 The method of claim 1 wherein the step of inserting spatiotemporal metadata into the data packets comprises the step of inserting permissible spatiotemporal metadata into the data packets and transmitting the data packets if the step of inspecting the data packets reveals that the data pack ets are missing spatiotemporal metadata or contain impermissible spatiotemporal metadata otherwise transmitting the data packets if the step of inspecting the data packets reveals that spatiotemporal metadata is already present and that the spatiotemporal metadata present is permissible 3 The method of claim 1 wherein the permission rules are related to privacy guidelines regarding the spatial metadata in
28. quire any input from the user to update its location Exemplary embodi ments involving such location aware network elements LANEs are described in detail below The location information may be coarse grained or fine grained depending on user preferences and the localization capabilities For example the process of embedding may be policy controlled based e g on a set of permission rules see below to define the location granularity to be embedded in the data stream For example in the case of a FAP located at the home of a user that is configured to embed location information the FAP could be configured by the user based on various criteria so as to satisfy privacy concerns of the user The FAP may be configured to embed home location information at various degrees of granularity such as at the room level the apartment level building level street block level neighborhood level or nothing at all According to an exemplary embodiment when the location information is coarse grained the information includes only a home address resolved to GPS coordinates and when the location informa tion is fine grained the information has localization informa tion i e relative to the home address such as room level A second data flow indicated by a solid arrow in FIG 1 involves end computing devices e g user equipment UE that can collaborate to estimate e g using triangulation their local position i e their location relative
29. r the network element to supplement or replace the spatiotemporal metadata already present in the data packets 9 The method of claim 8 wherein the step of configuring the network element is performed by a user of one of the end computing devices 10 The method of claim 8 wherein the step of configuring the network element is performed remotely by a network service provider of a network to which the network element is connected 11 The method of claim 8 wherein the step of configuring the network element is performed by the network element using global positioning system information 10 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 12 12 The method of claim 1 further comprising the step of configuring the network element with the permission rules 13 The method of claim 1 wherein the step of inspecting the data packets is performed by the network element using deep packet inspection 14 The method of claim 1 further comprising the step of removing the spatiotemporal metadata already present in the data packets if the spatiotemporal metadata already present in the data packets is impermissible 15 The method of claim 1 wherein the step of inspecting the data packets reveals that spatiotemporal metadata is already present in the data packets themselves and wherein the step of conforming the existing spatiotemporal metadata with the user configurable permission rules comprises the step of modifying th
30. ser equipment UE such as sensors and or mobile telephones which may be considered to be a type of sensor see below Network ele ment 104 e g a FAP upon inspection of the first data flow and following consultation with privacy configuration param eters see below embeds if necessary spatial e g location information temporal e g a timestamp reflecting the cur rent clock time read by the network element and or spa tiotemporal metadata e g spatiotemporal metadata in the data stream Whether it is spatial metadata temporal meta data or spatiotemporal metadata if any that gets embedded in the data stream depends on the design and application needs For example there may be a sensor system that reports infor mation e g temperature only when the sensor system is explicitly queried by the application In this case the sensor may only provide the result of a temperature measurement e g 22 degrees Celsius C and include no time or location information In this instance embedding spatiotem poral metadata would be preferable In other occasions a sensor may report threshold crossings it experiences For example the sensor may report that the temperature has just gone past 50 C and provides only the time when this event was noted An application tied to the sensor measurements would deduce the sensor location by reading a sensor identi fication ID from the packet with the threshold crossing notification
31. sion rules and transmitting the data packets if the step of inspecting the data packets reveals that the data packets are missing spatiotemporal metadata otherwise conforming existing spatiotemporal metadata with the user configurable permission rules and transmitting the 15 data packets if the step of inspecting the data packets reveals that spatiotemporal metadata is already present in the data packets themselves wherein the user configurable permission rules further designate a granularity of spatiotemporal metadata 20 inserted into the data packets depending on one or more of an origin of the data packets a destination of the data packets application to which the data packets relate time and date and wherein the steps of inserting and conforming are performed only for application data 25 carrying packets meant to be processed by end user applications
32. task entities a sensor in the strict sense e g a hazmat sensor sensing presence and or concentration of haz ardous material a temperature sensor a vibration sensor an acoustic sensor etc A mobile telephone is an example of a multisensory device as it may include a microphone an accel erometer a GPS sensor and possibly a temperature sensor Hence the mobile telephone itself is the sensor Alternatively a Bluetooth equipped mobile telephone may collect infor mation from multiple wearable Bluetooth equipped sen sors carried by a person a pedometer a heartbeat sensor a body temperature sensor etc and then pass this information to a remote health care monitoring application For the user equipment UE that does not embed location information into the data stream network element 104 can insert its location information as a proxy for the location of the user equipment UE with the assumption that the user is close by Accordingly network element 104 is preferably programmed with its location and or has the capabilities to determine its location By way of example only with a FAP in auser s home the user can program the FAP with a particular address or any other coarser finer location information see below Alternatively the FAP can have access to GPS capa bilities and can determine its location automatically The latter set up would be beneficial for situations where the network element is moved since it would not re
33. tem 410 can be incorporated into an application specific or general use integrated circuit Optional video display 440 is any type of video display suitable for interacting with a human user of apparatus 400 Generally video display 440 is a computer monitor or other similar video display Although illustrative embodiments of the present invention have been described herein it is to be understood that the invention is not limited to those precise embodiments and that various other changes and modifications may be made by one skilled in the art without departing from the scope of the invention What is claimed is 1 A method for processing information streams produced by an application on end computing devices that are trans mitted over a wireless network having at least one network element the method comprising the steps of inspecting on the fly data packets which originate from the end computing devices and are received by the network element for spatiotemporal metadata in the data packets themselves consulting user configurable permission rules that dictate what spatiotemporal metadata is permissible and what spatiotemporal metadata is impermissible for the appli cation and inserting spatiotemporal metadata into the data packets themselves in accordance with the user configurable permission rules and transmitting the data packets if the step of inspecting the data packets reveals that the data packets are missing spatiotemp
34. the data packet 4 The method of claim 1 further comprising the step of consulting permission rules that dictate when spatiotem poral metadata may be inserted into the data packets and wherein the step of inserting spatiotemporal metadata into the data packets is performed in accordance with the permission rules 5 The method of claim 4 wherein the permission rules include inserting spatiotemporal metadata into the data pack ets once per source destination flow or over a given interval of time 6 The method of claim 4 wherein the step of inserting spatiotemporal metadata into the data packets comprises the step of inserting permissible spatiotemporal metadata into the data packets and transmitting the data packets if the step of inspecting the data packets reveals that the data pack ets are missing spatiotemporal metadata or contain impermissible spatiotemporal metadata otherwise transmitting the data packets if the step of inspecting the data packets reveals that spatiotemporal metadata is already present and that the spatiotemporal metadata present is permissible 7 The method of claim 1 wherein the network element comprises at least one of a WiFi base station a gateway a sensor network controller and a femto cell access point 8 The method of claim 1 further comprising the steps of configuring the network element with spatial metadata related to a location of the network element and using the spatial metadata fo
35. to each other For example localization may be relative to a local coordinate system Upon transmitting their data these end computing devices embed this relative location localization informa US 8 913 552 B2 5 tion in the data stream they transmit 1 6 to network element 104 Network element 104 upon inspecting the data stream and following consultation with set privacy guidelines may refine the localization information For example network element 104 may alter the relative location to a global loca tion e g while the original location may be noted simply as on the left side of the room the generic room may be replaced with specific information such as kitchen or replace altogether the location information as in the case described above where the user equipment does not embed location information into the data stream User equipment UE with location awareness capabilities still only know a relative location with respect to say a generic room Net work element 104 may know that these devices are within the kitchen so network element 104 can change the reference coordinate system from that of the room to that of the house While network element 104 may insert remove and or otherwise alter supplement or replace the location informa tion in the data stream as described above other techniques may also be used to change the location information In one exemplary embodiment whenever network e
36. unction with the description of FIG 1 above In step 304 the LANE e g network element 104 is configured set location parameters such as acquiring location information for the LANE and configuring the lt if then gt privacy rules see for example the description of FIG 2 above referred to more generally as permission rules below As described in detail below the permission rules may also dictate when i e 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 8 with what frequency spatiotemporal metadata may be inserted into the data packets For example the permission rules may dictate that spatiotemporal metadata may be inserted into the data packet only once per source destination flow or only once per given interval of time e g once every 10 minutes This is done for efficiency sake i e to prevent taking duplicative actions With regard to the second phase in step 306 the LANE e g network element 104 waits for data packets arriving at a downstream port e g from the sensor side see description of FIG 2 above Upon receipt of a data packet in step 308 the LANE inspects the packet for time and location informa tion spatiotemporal metadata This inspection may involve deep packet inspection DPI techniques as the time and location information will likely be embedded in the payload of the packet e g within the payload portion of a transmis sion control protocol internet protocol TC
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