Granted Patent B1

US 9,462,420 · App. 14/720,960 · Granted Oct 4, 2016

Abstract

Claims (35)

1. An antenna pairing system, comprising:

a mobile communication platform (MCP);

a prediction system to determine geographic boundaries where particular pairs of antennas aboard the 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 pairing in response to the determined geographical boundaries;

the prediction system to apply the predicted course and heading from a stored MCP voyage route, and to set the geographic boundaries from preset objectives for MCP network performance along the stored MCP route; and

logic implementing a feedback loop to update the predictive process according to discrepancies between data on actual MCP network performance and the preset objectives for MCP network performance.

2. The system of claim 1 , the prediction system determining the geographic boundaries to meet set objectives for MCP network performance.

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

4. The system of claim 1 , further comprising:

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

5. The system of claim 4 , 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.

6. The system of claim 4 , further comprising a network management system providing known, forecasted, or typical available capacity to/fr.

7. The system of claim 6 , further comprising:

a network management system providing a measure of variability.

8. 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.

9. The system of claim 1 , further comprising:

logic to process input signals of attenuation function,

course,

antenna characteristics,

antenna utilization, and

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.

10. The system of claim 1 , further comprising:

logic 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.

11. The system of claim 10 , 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.

Assignments (13)