Spatiotemporal Annotation of Data Packets in Wireless Networks
Contents
1. sensedinformation 104 102 reg ee be POS Dataflow and spatiotemporalmetadata 106 applications Patent Application Publication Jul 26 2012 Sheet 1 of 4 US 2012 0188940 A1 user equipment UE sensor fp Dataflowaf sensedinformation 104 106 102 rss l 4 Datafiow and spatiotemporal metadata s Dataflow and spatiotemporal metadata 3 applications FIG 1 Patent Application Publication Jul 26 2012 Sheet 2 of 4 US 2012 0188940 A1 209 ae hea db GPSt Lattongs 224 configuration gery erver 30Main tr 5 KE siiLatLong 208 set geospatial information manual configuration upsthe any outgoing port d wnstream Type address ifcoming port 30 Main Str acy configuration lt if destination XYZ gt Enteronty rip code if destination ABC gt Remove any tocation infermation if origin device D amp appl A gt Enter street address applications FIG 2 Patent Application Publication Jul 26 2012 Sheet 3 of 4 US 2012 0188940 A1 302 304 install loc aware l network element Phase LANE set location parameters LANE waits for data packets aoa ed tenants LANE operation Phase Il J contain permissible spatiotemporal metadata FIG 3 Patent Application Publication Jul 26 2012 Sheet 4 of 4 US 2012 0188940 A1 FIG 4 r 400 420 425 a Network To From Processor UE Compu2. 19 US 20120188940A1 a2 Patent Application Publication o Pub No US 2012 0188940 A1 United States Agrawal et al 43 Pub Date Jul 26 2012 54 SPATIOTEMPORAL ANNOTATION OF DATA 82 US CL serdar tan 370 328 PACKETS IN WIRELESS NETWORKS 57 ABSTRACT 75 Inventors Dakshi Agrawal Monsey NY Techniques for annotating data packets with time and or loca US Chatschik Bisdikian tion information in wireless networks are provided In one Chappaqua NY US aspect a method for processing information streams pro duced by end computing devices that are transmitted over a 73 Assignee International Business Machines wireless network having at least one network element is pro Corporation Armonk NY US vided The method includes the following steps Data packets which originate from the end computing devices and are 21 Appl No 13 012 387 received by the network element are inspected for spatiotem poral metadata Spatiotemporal metadata is inserted into the 22 Filed Jan 24 2011 data packets and the data packets are transmitted if the step of P inspecting the data packets reveals that the data packets are by ate g n missing spatiotemporal metadata Otherwise the data packets Publication Classification are ted if the step of inspecting the data Ae 51 Int Cl reveals that spatiotemporal metadata is already present in the HOAW 4 00 2009 01 data packets user equipment UE sensor Dataflow of
3. contains impermissible spa tiotemporal metadata i e the data packet violates the privacy guidelines or if the packet contains insufficient or no spa tiotemporal metadata at all then in step 314 the LANE inserts embeds allowable permissible spatiotemporal meta data in the packet accordingly and transmits the packet out an upstream port see FIG 2 Steps 306 312 are then repeated US 2012 0188940 Al 0034 While packet inspection may be performed at each incoming packet for example as in methodology 300 embed ding of spatiotemporal metadata may occur only as often or as frequent 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 determination of whether embedding is necessary for reasons such as the aforementioned flow or session rules 0035 It is notable that in step 312 the term contain permissible spatiotemporal metadata can be interpreted quite generically based on what permissible is Perm
4. element such as location aware network 100 described in conjunction with the description of FIGS 1 and 2 As highlighted above network 100 includes at least one network element e g network element 104 Apparatus 400 can be configured to serve as one or more of the network elements in network 100 0038 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 0039 As is known in the art the methods and apparatus discussed herein may be distributed as an article of manufac ture that itself comprises a machine readable medium con taining one or more programs which when executed imple ment embodiments 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 a program configured to inspect data packets which originate from the end computing devices and are received by the network element for spatiotemporal meta data and insert spatiotemporal metadata into the data packets and transmit the data packets if the step of inspecting the data packets reveals that the data packets are
5. end computing devices e g user equipment UE that can collaborate to estimate e g using triangula US 2012 0188940 Al tion their local position i e their location relative 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 information in the data stream they transmit i e to network element 104 Network element 104 upon inspecting the data stream and following consultation with set privacy guide lines may refine the localization information For example network element 104 may alter the relative location to a global location 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 0022 Whilenetwork element 104 may insert remove and or otherwise alter supplement or replace the location
6. is then consumed by applications 106 As highlighted above the user equipment UE can include sensors A sensor can be a simple single 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 0019 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 capa bilities to determine its location By way of example only with a FAP in a user 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 capabilities and can
7. missing spatiotem poral metadata otherwise transmit the data packets if the step of inspecting the data packets reveals that spatiotemporal metadata is already present in the data packets 0040 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 0041 Processor device 420 can be configured to imple ment 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 infor mation 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 no
8. packets reveals that spatiotemporal metadata is already present in the data packets 2 The method of claim 1 further comprising the step of consulting permission rules that dictate what spatiotempo ral metadata is permissible and what spatiotemporal metadata is impermissible and wherein the step of inserting spatiotemporal metadata into the data packets is performed in accordance with the permission rules 3 The method of claim 2 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 4 The method of claim 2 wherein the permission rules are related to privacy guidelines regarding the spatial metadata in the data packet 5 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 6 The metho
9. present invention will be obtained by reference to the follow ing detailed description and drawings BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 0009 FIG 1 is a diagram illustrating an exemplary loca tion aware wireless network according to an embodiment of the present invention 0010 FIG 2 is a diagram illustrating several exemplary ways by which a network element in a location aware wire less network can attain location awareness according to an embodiment of the present invention 0011 FIG 3 is a diagram illustrating an exemplary meth odology 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 and 0012 FIG 4is a diagram illustrating an exemplary appa ratus 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 0013 As described above in order to create open smart location enabled applications the dependencies on existing location infrastructures need to be reduced Accordingly pro vided herein are techniques that allow location based ser vices to exist independently of associating with a location infrastructure that mu
10. streams produced by the end computing devices are transmitted over network 100 As will be described in detail below according to the present teachings 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 0016 Inthe example shown in FIG 1 there are two flows of data a first flow and a second flow The first data flow indicated b
11. aps 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 provided the address 30 Main Street as its location and network element 204 consults a geospatial service to obtain the GPS coordi nates for 30 Main Street which network element 204 can use to replace or alternatively supplement the location informa tion 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 informa tion 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 0026 Thesecond method involves a bootstrap or assisted configuration 1 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 con nected remotely configures network element 204 when net work element 204 powers on According to an exemplary embodiment an operator from the network service provider con
12. ata is already present in the data packets 17 An article of manufacture for processing information streams produced by end computing devices that are trans mitted over a wireless network having at least one network element comprising a machine readable recordable medium containing one or more programs which when executed implement the steps of inspecting data packets which originate from the end com puting devices and are received by the network element for spatiotemporal metadata and inserting spatiotemporal metadata into the data packets and transmitting the data packets if the step of inspecting the data packets reveals that the data packets are missing spatiotemporal metadata otherwise transmitting the data packets if the step of inspecting the data packets reveals that spatiotemporal metadata is already present in the data packets
13. bed above the present location aware network includes user equipment UE not shown accessing Internet based applications in this case Internet applications 206 through a network ele ment 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 out going port through which data packets are transmitted see below 0025 FIG 2 illustrates three non limiting exemplary methods by which network element 204 can acquire location awareness A location aware network element is also referred to herein as a LANE The first method involves manual configuration 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 interfac ing to the configuration 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 com puter 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 m
14. cquired 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 conjunction with the description of FIG 1 above In step 304 the LANE e g network element 104 is configured set location parameters such as acquir ing 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 with what frequency spatiotem poral metadata may be inserted into the data packets For example the permission rules may dictate that spatiotempo ral 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 0031 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 loca tion information spatiotemporal metadata This inspection may involve deep packet inspection DPI techniques as the time and location info
15. d of claim 5 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 7 The method of claim 5 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 Jul 26 2012 data packets reveals that spatiotemporal metadata is already present and that the spatiotemporal metadata present is permissible 8 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 9 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 for the network element to supplement or replace the spatiotemporal metadata already present in the data packets 10 The method of claim 9 wherein the step of configuring the network element is performed by a user of one of the end computing devices 11 The method of claim 9 wherein the step of configuring the
16. determine its location automatically The latter set up would be beneficial for situ ations where the network element is moved since it would not require any input from the user to update its location Exem plary embodiments involving such location aware network elements LANEs are described in detail below 0020 The location information may be coarse grained or fine grained depending on user preferences and the localiza tion 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 0021 A second data flow indicated by a solid arrow in FIG 1 involves
17. he case with social network privacy rules when for example a social network user specifies who can see updates in personal status information friends friends of friends etc Spatial infor mation may be treated in a very similar way and describe under what conditions the clauses see below spatial infor mation 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 sub scriber 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 ifthe 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 examp
18. hnique such as DPI to inspect a passing packet for temporal information If temporal information is missing a timestamp may be entered based on the time indicated by the internal clock of the net work element A user may configure the formatting details of the time for example to provide both time and date informa tion or only time or configure the time granularity to be in minutes seconds milliseconds etc Note that contrary to spatial information 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 pri vacy may be less crucial than in the case of spatial informa tion Nonetheless the same techniques employed for provid ing permission rules such as using a browser application on a PC connected to the configuration module of a network element can also be used to provide permission rules for temporal information used to configure rules for when to write and how to write i e format time information 0037 Turning now to FIG 4 a block diagram is shown of an apparatus 400 for implementing one or more of the meth odologies presented herein By way of example only appa Jul 26 2012 ratus 400 can be configured to implement one or more of the steps of methodology 300 of FIG 3 for processing informa tion streams produced by end computing devices that are transmitted over a wireless network having at least one net work
19. infor mation in the data stream as described above other tech niques may also be used to change the location information In one exemplary embodiment whenever network element 104 identifies missing or non complying i e impermis sible location information in a data packet flow network element 104 can generate a brand new data packet to the same destination that includes the updated information assuming that it also clears any non compliant information Alterna tively in another exemplary embodiment whenever network element 104 identifies missing or non complying i e impermissible location information network element 104 replaces the data packet with the missing or non complying i e impermissible 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 0023 As highlighted above the present techniques address several 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 infrastructure that must be queried for location information With reference to the description of FIG 1 presented above the present techniques provide for the embedding of spa tiotemporal metadata directly in the data e g sensory data stream This would sati
20. issible will include both the granularity of spatial information and also when the information can be permitted to be written Hence the example above of writing a specific piece of infor mation every 10 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 consulted 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 0036 The above exemplary embodiments have consid ered the embedding or updating of permissible spatial infor mation 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 temporal information can also be embedded or updated in information streams A network element such as network elements 104 or 204 can employ a tec
21. le 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 find 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 0030 FIG 3 is a diagram illustrating an exemplary meth odology 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 Jul 26 2012 network 100 described for example in conjunction with the description 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 a
22. network element is performed remotely by a network service provider ofa network to which the network element is connected 12 The method of claim 9 wherein the step of configuring the network element is performed by the network element using global positioning system information 13 The method of claim 2 further comprising the step of configuring the network element with the permission rules 14 The method of claim 1 wherein the step of inspecting the data packets is performed by the network element using deep packet inspection 15 The method of claim 2 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 16 A wireless network over which information streams produced by end computing devices are transmitted the net work having at least one network element comprising a memory and at least one processor device coupled to the memory operative to inspect data packets which originate from the end com puting devices and are received by the network ele ment for spatiotemporal metadata and insert spatiotemporal 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 metad
23. nsumption etc or GPS may not be always operational e g in indoor environments 0004 Cellular network infrastructure can provide value add by estimating device location and creating location meta data for the device Traditional cellular base stations can esti mate 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 informa tion This information can be stored in a network provider s infrastructure and become available through a location ser vice 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 0005 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
24. rmation will likely be embedded in the payload of the packet e g within the payload portion of a transmission control protocol internet protocol TCP IP packet However the packet inspection may also include shallow packet inspection such as inspecting the TCP IP packet headers to extract information that could be used later 0032 Upon inspection of the packet in step 310 the LANE consults the list of permission rules for the spatiotem poral 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 0033 In step 312 the LANE determines whether or not the data packet contains permissible spatiotemporal meta data If the packet contains permissible spatiotemporal meta data 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
25. sfy the first aspect as applications and services can now extract the required spatiotemporal infor mation directly from the data stream without requiring que rying for location 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 Jul 26 2012 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 0024 FIG 2 is a diagram illustrating some exemplary ways by which a network element in a location aware net work such as wireless network 100 of FIG 1 described above can attain location awareness As descri
26. significance become tied to a location infrastructure and the utility of these data is restricted by the access rights to that location infrastructure e g requires access to location infor mation from a cellular company provider 0006 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 0007 The present invention provides techniques for anno tating data packets with time and or location information in wireless networks In one aspect of the invention a method for processing information streams produced by end comput ing devices that are transmitted over a wireless network hav Jul 26 2012 ing 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 element are inspected for spatiotemporal metadata Spatiotemporal 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 spa tiotemporal metadata Otherwise the data packets are trans mitted if the step of inspecting the data packets reveals that spatiotemporal metadata is already present in the data pack ets 0008 A more complete understanding of the present invention as well as further features and advantages of the
27. sor measure ments would deduce the sensor location by reading a sensor identification ID from the packet with the threshold cross ing notification 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 0017 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 Jul 26 2012 metadata missing incorrect existing location metadata and or 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 0018 In FIG 1 end computing devices 102 e g user equipment UE produce sensed information that
28. st be queried for location information The present techniques allow data streams to become spa tiotemporally rich even when their sources 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 0014 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 0015 FIG 1 for example is a diagram illustrating exem plary 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 WiFi base station a gateway a sensor network controller US 2012 0188940 Al 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
29. sults a geospatial database install db of the locations of its installed LANEs which may include actual subscribers home locations and configures each LANE remotely accordingly US 2012 0188940 Al 0027 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 0028 As highlighted above the user equipment may be configured 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 0029 Independently of how a LANE acquires its location information end users may set conditions of when and how to embed location information in data streams labeled Pri vacy configuration in FIG 2 In FIG 2 this is shown as part of the end user manual configuration of LANE but alterna tives are possible As indicated in FIG 2 through some client application running on e g a personal computer a user can manually enter type the location information e g 30 Main Street to be recorded in a sensory data stream Like wise privacy policies configuration may be entered manually by a user through a client application Such is t
30. ted that each distributed processor that makes up pro cessor device 420 generally contains its own addressable memory space It should also be noted that some or all of computer system 410 can be incorporated into an application specific or general use integrated circuit US 2012 0188940 Al 0042 Optional video display 440 is any type of video display suitable for interacting with a human user of appara tus 400 Generally video display 440 is a computer monitor or other similar video display 0043 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 end computing devices that are transmitted over a wireless network having at least one network element the method comprising the steps of inspecting data packets which originate from the end com puting devices and are received by the network element for spatiotemporal metadata and inserting spatiotemporal metadata into the data packets and transmitting the data packets if the step of inspecting the data packets reveals that the data packets are missing spatiotemporal metadata otherwise transmitting the data packets if the step of inspecting the data
31. ter Network MedialfF je 435 wenste l Display Lue me some oon won oon vos aee aol US 2012 0188940 Al SPATIOTEMPORAL ANNOTATION OF DATA PACKETS IN WIRELESS NETWORKS FIELD OF THE INVENTION 0001 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 0002 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 introduction of smart sensing enabling technologies can only hasten the growth trend of mobile applications 0003 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 If the source device is equipped with a global positioning system GPS it can attach geo coordinate metadata to application sessions How ever 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 co
32. y dashed arrows involves end computing devices that do not embed location or time information in the data stream These end computing devices can include user equipment UE such as sensors and or mobile telephones which may be considered to be a type of sensor see below Network element 104 e g a FAP upon inspection of the first data flow and following consultation with privacy configu ration parameters see below embeds if necessary spatial e g location information temporal e g a timestamp reflecting the current clock time read by the network element and or spatiotemporal metadata e g spatiotemporal meta data in the data stream Whether it is spatial metadata tem poral metadata 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 information 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 spatiotemporal metadata would be preferable In other occa sions 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 sen
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