Granted Patent B1

US 9,042,911 · App. 14/309,891 · Granted May 26, 2015

Abstract

Claims (23)

1. An antenna pairing system, comprising:

a prediction system to determine geographic boundaries where particular antennas aboard a mobile communication platform (MCP) and their respective data bearers should be activated or deactivated along a predicted course and heading for the MCP;

a system to manage network connectivity for the MCP in real-time and to alter antenna pairings of the antennas aboard the MCP (MCP antennas) with antennas not aboard the MCP (non-MCP antennas) in response to the determined geographical boundaries; and

a database comprising characteristics of each non-MCP antenna and of MCP antennas capable of pairing with each non-MCP antenna.

2. The system of claim 1 , wherein the characteristics include frequency band, polarization, gain as a function of direction, beam tilt up or down, angular beam width horizontally and vertically, and antenna altitude.

3. The system of claim 1 , further comprising a network management system providing known, forecasted, or typical available bandwidth capacity to or from each non-MCP antenna.

4. The system of claim 3 , further comprising:

a network management system providing a measure of variability.

5. The system of claim 1 , further comprising:

sensors, both local to the MCP and remote, supplying environmental data to an environmental integrator which predicts radio wave attenuation between any pair of antennas as a function of environmental inputs, antenna characteristics, and relative antenna positions and orientations.

6. The system of claim 5 , further configured to process input signals of attenuation function, course, antenna characteristics, and antenna utilization, and to set objectives for network performance to perform a goal-seeking search of a parameter space and to output a set of control events to MCP modems and antenna systems mapped to boundary curves in space, the crossing of which by the course of the MCP constituting a trigger.

7. The system of claim 5 , further configured to implement a feedback/learning process in which logged data on conditions, inputs, and performance are compared to performance as predicted from observed inputs by a model used to establish original geofenced antenna and modem control boundaries.

8. The system of claim 7 , further comprising:

a discrepancy analyzer which partitions detected deviations of actual from forecast into corrections which are fed back into the feedback/learning process, an antenna database, and an environmental integrator.

9. The system of claim 1 , further comprising:

the prediction system configured to determine the geographic boundaries to meet set objectives for MCP network performance.

10. The system of claim 1 , further configured to log data on network performance, actual MCP course, and environment during motion of the MCP along the course.

11. The system of claim 1 , further configured to apply a feedback process post voyage of the MCP to update a predictive model and parameters of the model to minimize discrepancies between logged and predicted MCP network performance.

12. An antenna pairing system, comprising:

a prediction system to determine geographic boundaries where particular antennas aboard a mobile communication platform (MCP) and their respective data bearers should be activated or deactivated along a predicted course and heading for the MCP;

a system to manage network connectivity for the MCP in real-time and to alter antenna pairings of the antennas aboard the MCP (MCP antennas) with antennas not aboard the MCP (non-MCP antennas) in response to the determined geographical boundaries; and

the prediction system configured to determine the geographic boundaries to meet set objectives for MCP network performance.

13. The antenna pairing system of claim 12 , further comprising a network management system providing known, forecasted, or typical available bandwidth capacity to or from each non-MCP antenna.

Assignments (21)