Charter Communications Operating, LLC

Wael Guibene

Hossam H Hmimy

Umamaheswar Achari Kakinada

Muhammad Khan

Mohamed Daoud

Hany A Heikal

Manish Jindal

Parmjit Dhillon

Satyanarayana Parimi

Patricia Zullo

Islam Alyafawi

Allan D Sjoestroem

A customer premises parking system including one or more cameras and wireless communications transmission capability is described. The presence of a vehicle with a license plate at an entrance or exit of a parking area is detected and one or more high resolution images are captured and time stamped. A license plate portion of the HD image is captured and stored. The license plate number and corresponding time is determined and communicated using a wide area wireless network. The HD license plate portion of the image is processed to produce a low resolution version of the license plate image which is segmented and processed into fragments which are transmitted via the wide area network using available transmission opportunities. A high resolution version of the license plate portion is stored at the premises where the parking facilitate is located and can be retrieved via a cellular wireless interface in the event of a dispute or discrepancy with regard to the detected and reported license plate number. From the time stamps associated with entrance and exit images of license plates the amount of time and/or date at which a vehicle was present at the parking garage is determined and the vehicle owner billed for the use of the parking facility.

Methods and apparatus for using wide area networks to support parking systems

A method for managing a hospitality workflow in a hotel, comprises imaging a region in front of a hotel room door on a checkout day, after the hotel room door is opened, by a camera. An image of the region is analyzed for the presence of a person and the image is analyzed for the presence of a bag, by a processing device. It is determined whether a guest checked out of the room based on the detection of the person and the detection of the bag. If it is determined that the guest checked out, the housekeeping department may be informed that the guest checked out, enabling quicker cleaning of a vacated room. A door lock system including the camera and a check-in procedure comprising reading QR code image on a guest's smart device by the camera, for example, are also disclosed.

Methods and systems for automating hospitality workflows

Methods and systems for real-time detection and reporting of trains is described. A system includes two train detection units (TDUs) for each railroad track intersecting a municipality boundary. Each TDU including a proximity sensor to sense a presence of an object on the railroad track, a camera to capture an image of a detected object when the object is within a detection zone, a radar to measure speed when the detected object is classified as a train, and a processor to classify the detected object, generate a timestamp corresponding to when the train entered and exited the detection zone, and determine a train length from the speed and time delta between entrance timestamp and exit timestamp. A train detection controller to receive at least the train length and a TDU identification from one of the two TDUs, and determine estimated time of arrivals for the train at different municipality locations.

System and method for real-time detection of trains

Methods and apparatus for controlling device use of available networks, e.g., cellular and WiFi, are described. End devices report key performance indicator and resource utilization information, e.g., on a per application basis, to a configuration server. The configuration server determines, based on the received information, e.g., using machine learning and/or artificial intelligence, sets of configuration profiles, each configuration profile including one or more set of applications for which an end device should use a particular network. An exemplary configuration profile may identify a first set of applications for which a first network is to be used, e.g., a cellular network such as a P-LTE network, and a second set of applications for which a second network, e.g. a WiFi network, is to be used. The configuration server selects a configuration profile that is best suited for a particular end device and communicates that selected profile to the end device.

Methods and apparatus for optimizing network access to enhance a user's experience

Real-time gunshot detection and reporting. A computing device detects, in an audio signal received by an audio receiver that includes a plurality of audio receiving elements, at least one gunshot. The computing device determines, based on the plurality of audio receiving elements, an audio location of the at least one gunshot. The computing device sends control signals to at least two cameras to cause the at least two cameras to capture at least two corresponding images of the audio location. The computing device, based on the at least two corresponding images, identifies a gunshot location and transmits a gunshot location identifier that identifies the gunshot location to a destination.

Method and apparatus for real-time gunshot detection and reporting

Methods and systems for multifactor authentication and authorization are described. A method includes receiving captured image data of a person with a badge needing access to a secure area, detecting at least two faces from the captured image data, identifying a first name based on matching a face associated with a live human face with a control face in a database, identifying a second name based on matching on another face associated with the badge with a control face in a database, performing character recognition on text associated with the another face, comparing the second name with the character recognized text, comparing the second name with the first name when the second name matches the character recognized text, checking access rights, checking for at least another person in a proximity of the secure area, and granting access when the person is sole person accessing the secure area.

Method and apparatus for multifactor authentication and authorization

A low-power wide area network supports IP communication between a wireless device and an IP application node. The LPWAN server provides the application node's IP address and a compression/decompression protocol to the device, which applies the protocol (i) to generate a compressed uplink IP header for wireless transmission to LPWAN radio gateway(s), where the compressed IP header is subsequently decompressed to form an uplink IP packet for transmission to the application node and (ii) to decompress a compressed downlink IP header received from a radio gateway, where the compressed IP header was generated from an uncompressed downlink IP header from the IP application node. The device can also segment large uplink IP packets and reassemble large downlink IP packets. In a LoRaWAN network, the join server facilitates arriving at a common compression/decompression protocol and assigns an IP address to the device to enable IP communication with an IP application client.

IP support in non-cellular low-power wide area networks

A network server selects a gateway, from among a plurality of alternative candidate gateways, to use for downlink wireless communication to an end node (EN) based on additional factors in addition to RSSI. Exemplary additional factors include: SNR, gateway loading, message loading, backhaul network loading, device type, application type, application priority, operator preferences, device/application black-lists, white-lists, and red-lists, number of devices, number of transmitting devices in a given time interval, operator rules and priorities. In some embodiments, the network server calculates a composite weighted metric (CWM) for each of the alternative candidate gateways which may be used for downlink, subject to operator policy rules, and selects to use a gateway based on the results, e.g. selects the gateway with the highest CWM.

Enhanced downlink message delivery in wide area networks

A system for fall prevention includes a platform for supporting a patient, the platform including rails and rail sensors, an image capturing device for capturing images of the patient, a patient monitor for interactive communication with the patient, a health monitoring station for receiving rail sensor data and communicating with the patient monitor, and an edge network device co-located with the platform and communicating with the station and the image capturing device. The edge network device receives image data from the image capturing device when the rail sensors indicate that the rail is down and the patient is at risk to themselves, anonymizes the image data to generate a skeleton image, determines a posture associated with the skeleton image, triggers alerts at the station when the patient is predicted to be sitting, and triggers escalated alerts at the station when the patient is predicted to be standing.

Methods and apparatus for fall prevention

An improved channel access mechanism provides collision avoidance improves throughput. A communications device, e.g. an end node in a long range wireless communications system, determines that data is to be transmitted and performs a channel activity detection operation to determine if a communications channel is busy or idle. In response to determining that the channel is busy, the communications device determines a wait time based on a random number and a number of times a busy channel has been detected since determining that data is to be transmitted. The communications device uses the determined wait time in determining when to transmit.

Method for enhancing network quality of service (QoS) in a wireless communication system

A communications system, e.g. an Internet-of-Things (IoT) communications system, includes satellite gateways in addition to terrestrial gateways. High QoS end point devices utilize communications via satellite gateway to be able to communicate with a network server when communications with the network server via terrestrial gateways are unavailable or unreliable. Low QoS end point devices may communicate with the network server via terrestrial gateways but are restricted from using the satellite gateways. An additional receive window, corresponding to the satellite gateway, is used for communicating downlink signals from the satellite gateway to the high QoS end point device.

Method for providing continuous connectivity to a device

An end point (EP) device may communicate with multiple gateways via wireless signals, e.g. wireless broadcast signals. An EP device is controlled, under the direction of a control server, e.g., an application server, to communicate via a single gateway. The control server associates the EP device with a single target gateway and/or uses EP transmission power control training iterations to reduce the EP transmission power level until the EP device is only able to successfully communicate its wireless signals to a single gateway.

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Parker, CO, United States of America

Wael Guibene