Infrastructure and method for geography based vehicle alert

1. An infrastructure for geofencing of vehicles, comprising

means for monitoring a vehicle's geographical position;

means for storing geofence data;

means for comparing the vehicle's geographical position with said geofence data to determine a geofence violation; and

means to trigger a predefined action in case of geofence violation;

said infrastructure being characterized by

means for defining geographical subregions of the whole area covered by said geofence data;

means for subdividing said geofence data into sub-geofences matching said geographical subregions and for generating association information associating said sub-geofences to the corresponding geographical subregions;

a first storage device for keeping all sub-geofence data and association information;

a second storage device for keeping association information and the sub-geofence data of at least one selected geographical subregion;

means for locating the vehicle in one of said geographical subregions on the base of the vehicle's geographical position and said definition of geographical subregions; and

means for restricting the determination of a geofence violation to a comparison of the vehicle's position with the sub-geofence data of the thus identified geographical subregion.

2. The infrastructure according to claim 1 , wherein said means for monitoring the vehicle's geographical position comprise a GPS receiver.

3. The infrastructure according to claim 1 , wherein an off-line compiler is for defining geographical subregions.

4. The infrastructure according to claim 3 , wherein an off-line compiler is provided for subdividing said geofence data into sub-geofences matching said geographical subregions.

5. The infrastructure according to claim 4 , wherein an off-line compiler is provided for generating association information associating said sub-geofences to the corresponding geographical subregions.

6. The infrastructure according to claim 5 , wherein an off-line compiler is also provided for storing the resulting data structures-sub-geofence data together with association information-on said first storage device.

7. The infrastructure according to claim 1 , wherein said first storage device comprises a non volatile memory for storing said sub-geofence data together with said association information.

8. The infrastructure according to claim 1 , wherein said second storage device comprises a RAM memory for storing association information and the sub-geofence data of at least one selected geographical subregion.

9. The infrastructure according to claim 1 , wherein said first storage device and said second storage device are accessible by a μ-controller

said second storage device for identifying those sub-geofences which are associated with the geographical subregion, where the vehicle has been located,

said first and second storage device for loading said identified sub-geofence data from said first storage device into said second storage device, and

said second storage device for comparing the vehicle's position with the said identified sub-geofence data.

10. A method for geofencing of vehicles, comprising

monitoring of the vehicle's geographical position;

comparing the vehicle's position with geofence data to determine geofence violation; and

triggering a predefined action in case of geofence violation;

said method being characterized by

defining geographical subregions;

subdividing said geofence data into sub-geofences matching said geographical subregions;

generating association information associating said sub-geofences to the corresponding geographical subregions;

locating the vehicle in one of said geographical subregions on the base of the vehicle's geographical position and said definition of geographical subregions; and

restricting the determination of a geofence violation to a comparison of the vehicle's position with the sub-geofence data of the thus identified geographical subregion.

11. The method according to claim 7 , wherein said sub-geofence data is associated to the tiles of a tile map representing the subregions of the whole geofence area.

12. The method according to claim 7 , wherein once before monitoring the vehicle's position to determine geofence violation all sub-geofence data of the whole area to be observed together with the corresponding association information is stored in a first storage device; and

association information is stored in a second storage device.

13. The method according to claim 8 , wherein said tile map association information is grouped according to geographically linked subsets of tiles of said tile map and wherein only a group of association information is loaded into the second storage device depending on the geographical subregion where the vehicle has been located.

14. The method according to claim 9 , wherein only the sub-geofence data of that geographical subregion, where the vehicle has been located, is loaded into the second storage device for comparison with the vehicle's position.