US 12,750,127 B2Granted

Methods and systems for network awareness of discontinuous coverage by non-terrestrial networks

AssigneesAT&T Intellectual Property I, L.P., AT&T Technical Services Company, Inc.

InventorsDaniel Vivanco, David Ross Beppler

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Abstract

Aspects of the subject disclosure may include, for example, obtaining satellite data indicative of satellite communication coverage areas associated with a plurality of satellites, wherein the satellite data includes locations for the satellite communication coverage areas as well as duration times for the satellite communication coverage areas; obtaining mobile device data associated with a plurality of mobile devices that are respectively attached to a wireless network, wherein the mobile device data indicates a respective location of each of the plurality of mobile devices, and wherein the plurality of mobile devices includes a first mobile device; determining whether the wireless network has information to be sent to the first mobile device, resulting in a first determination; determining, based upon the satellite data and a first location of the first mobile device, whether a period of time that the first mobile device is predicted to be out of the communication coverage areas meets a threshold, resulting in a second determination; and responsive to the first determination being that the wireless network has information to be sent to the first mobile device and to the second determination being that the period of time meets the threshold, facilitating an action. Other embodiments are disclosed.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A device comprising:

a processing system including a processor;
and
a memory that stores executable instructions that, when executed by the processing system, facilitate performance of operations, the operations comprising:
obtaining satellite data indicative of satellite communication coverage areas associated with a plurality of satellites, wherein the satellite data includes locations for the satellite communication coverage areas as well as duration times for the satellite communication coverage areas;
obtaining mobile device data associated with a plurality of mobile devices that are respectively attached to a wireless network, wherein the mobile device data indicates a respective location of each of the plurality of mobile devices, and wherein the plurality of mobile devices includes a first mobile device;
determining whether the wireless network has information to be sent to the first mobile device, resulting in a first determination;
determining, based upon the satellite data and a first location of the first mobile device, whether a period of time that the first mobile device is predicted to be out of the satellite communication coverage areas meets a threshold, resulting in a second determination;
and
responsive to the first determination being that the wireless network has information to be sent to the first mobile device and to the second determination being that the period of time meets the threshold, facilitating an action selected from:
prohibiting the wireless network from sending a paging message to the first mobile device during the period of time;
discarding the information that was to be sent to the first mobile device;
or
not taking additional actions and allowing data to be attempted to be transmitted from the wireless network to the mobile device.

10 more elements

A non-transitory machine-readable medium comprising executable instructions that, when executed by a processing system including a processor, facilitate performance of operations, the operations comprising:

obtaining, for a constellation of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites, satellite ephemeris data;
predicting, based upon the satellite ephemeris data, a coverage map, wherein the coverage map comprises predicted locations at which satellite communications coverage will be available as well as respective times associated with the predicted locations;
predicting for a first end-user device of a plurality of end-user devices one or more future locations, resulting in one or more predicted future locations;
determining, based upon the coverage map and the one or more predicted future locations, a predicted time at which the first end-user device is predicted to be out of the satellite communication coverage;
determining a time period between a current time and the predicted time;
determining whether the time period meets a time threshold, resulting in a determination;
and
responsive to the determination being that the time period meets the time threshold, facilitating an action selected from:
prioritizing a downloading of download traffic to the first end-user device;
prioritizing an uploading of upload traffic from the first end-user device;
mandating that the first end-user device be disconnected from a network node prior to the predicted time;
or
any combination thereof.

10 more elements

A method comprising:

receiving, by a processing system of a mobile communication device including a processor, data identifying expected satellite coverage;
obtaining, by the processing system, a location of the mobile communication device;
predicting, based upon the expected satellite coverage and the location of the mobile communication device, a length of time associated with a predicted satellite coverage gap;
and
based upon the length of time associated with the predicted satellite coverage gap, facilitating, by the processing system, an action selected from the following:
in a first case that the length of time associated with the predicted satellite coverage gap meets a first time threshold, cause the mobile communication device to enter a dormant state during the length of time associated with the predicted satellite coverage gap;
in a second case that a battery state of the mobile communication device meets a power threshold, cause the mobile communication device to enter the dormant state during the length of time associated with the predicted satellite coverage gap;
in a third case that the length of time associated with the predicted satellite coverage gap does not meet a second time threshold, and an urgency to transmit outgoing data meets an outgoing data urgency threshold, cause the mobile communication device to continue attempting to transmit the outgoing data;
in a fourth case that the length of time associated with the predicted satellite coverage gap does not meet the second time threshold, and an urgency to receive incoming data meets an incoming data urgency threshold, cause the mobile communication device to continue attempting to receive the incoming data;
or
any combination thereof.

8 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.