Patent ID: 8811265
Filing Date: 2014-08-19
Classification: H04B,H04W

Abstract:
1. A method of communicating with a fleet of vehicles, the method comprising: designating a single vehicle of a fleet to be a fleet router, the fleet including a plurality of vehicles; routing long range communication through the fleet router, where all long range communication between individual vehicles within the fleet and any communication point outside of the fleet are routed through the fleet router, wherein none of the individual vehicles within the fleet except for the fleet router communicate directly with any communication point outside of the fleet, wherein the long range communication between the fleet router and any communication point outside of the fleet is detectable by one or more remotely located detecting systems; and forming an ad-hoc communication network with the plurality of vehicles of the fleet to communicate communication signals between the plurality of vehicles in the fleet, wherein each vehicle in the fleet uses detected surveillance information to determine the network topology and each vehicle routes messages based on the discovered network topology, wherein the communication signals between the plurality of vehicles in the fleet are not detectable by the one or more remotely located detecting systems, and wherein the detected surveillance information is detected by at least one vehicle within the plurality of vehicles and includes at least one of position, ID, speed, heading, and intended trajectory information for the plurality of vehicles.