Abstract:
A method of delivering weather information to a wireless device. The method includes obtaining weather information from a weather information server, obtaining a subset of the weather information from the weather information, and sending the subset of the weather information to the wireless device.

Description:
CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION 
   This application claims priority under 35 U.S.C. § 119(e) to U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60/339,974 filed Dec. 10, 2001. 

   BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
   Wireless devices have become increasingly prevalent in society. Devices are often used for one-way or two-way communications. However, wireless devices also have found utility as information gathering devices. For example, wireless devices can be used to access the Internet. However, wireless devices have not been utilized to provide real-time information relating to information that is only useful when conveyed in real-time. For example, weather alerts in the form of, for example, severe weather warnings or watches are issued by weather services such as the United States National Weather Service. If such alerts are not received in real-time, they are not helpful to persons who may need to evacuate or take precautions. Thus, there is a need to provide the capability to transmit weather alerts, in real-time, to a wireless device. 
   SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
   In one embodiment, the present invention is directed to a method of delivering weather information to a wireless device. The method includes obtaining weather information from a weather information server, obtaining a subset of the weather information from the weather information, and sending the subset of the weather information to the wireless device. 
   The present invention is also directed, in another embodiment, to a wireless gateway. The gateway includes a database having stored therein user information and a router in communication with the database. The gateway obtains weather information from a weather information server, obtains a subset of the weather information from the weather information, and sends the subset of the weather information to a wireless device. 
   The present invention is also directed, in another embodiment, to a system. The system includes a mobile switching center, a gateway in communication with the mobile switching center, and a weather information server in communication with the gateway. The gateway obtains weather information from the weather information server, obtains a subset of the weather information from the weather information, and sends the subset of the weather information to a wireless device. 

   
     BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
     Further advantages of the present invention may be better understood by referring to the following description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which: 
       FIG. 1  is a simplified block diagram of a system according to one embodiment of the present invention; 
       FIG. 2  is a simplified block diagram illustrating elements of the wireless gateway of  FIG. 1 ; 
       FIG. 3  is a flowchart of a process for providing wireless weather information according to one embodiment of the present invention; 
       FIG. 4  is an example of weather information that may be accessed using the present invention; and 
       FIG. 5  is an example of the source markup language of the information of  FIG. 4 . 
   

   DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS 
   It is to be understood that the figures and descriptions of the present invention have been simplified to illustrate elements that are relevant for a clear understanding of the present invention, while eliminating, for purposes of clarity, other elements of a conventional telecommunications network. For example, certain network details and modules of certain messaging platforms are not described herein. Those of ordinary skill in the art will recognize, however, that these and other elements may be desirable in a typical communications network. However, because such elements are well known in the art, and because they do not facilitate a better understanding of the present invention, a discussion of such elements is not provided herein. 
   The present invention relates to an interactive wireless communications system in which a wireless device user can receive weather information automatically from a wireless network. The present invention employs a wireless gateway to control selection and dissemination of the weather information. As used herein, the terms “weather warning” or “warning” refer to weather information that may include warnings and/or watches relating to the weather conditions at a particular geographical area. 
     FIG. 1  is a simplified schematic diagram of a system  10  according to one embodiment of the present invention. The system  10  includes a wireless device  12 , a mobile switching center (MSC)  14 , a wireless gateway  16 , an intermediate network  18  (such as the Internet), and a weather information server  20 . The wireless device  12  may be any wireless digital processor capable of accessing the Internet such as, for example, a mobile telephone, a personal digital assistant, or a pager such as those sold by Research in Motion (RIM) Inc. 
   The mobile switching center  14  may comprise any one of a number of known communications switching devices, including those commonly used and known in the art for providing either digital or analog cellular telephone service to a plurality of wireless devices  12 . The mobile switching center  14  performs switching functions to permit communication between the intermediate network  18  and the wireless device  12 . Although only one mobile switching center  14  is shown, it will be understood that the system  10  may include more. 
   The wireless gateway  16  refers to a software infrastructure that connects the wireless domain (i.e. wireless device  12  and MSC  14 ) with the intermediate network  18 . Each network in  FIG. 1  may be running a different protocol. Message transfer among users that communicate with different protocols may be routed through a network gateway processor that transforms the message from the foreign protocol to the native protocol. Thus, gateways that are used for message transfer among interconnected networks, such as over what is commonly referred to as the “Internet,” accept e-mail messages from other gateways and from connected networks. 
   In that regard, the wireless gateway  16  carries out protocol conversions between, for example, wireless access protocol (WAP) communication protocols and Internet communication protocols (e.g. HTTP, TCP/IP). The underlying protocol for packaging and decoding messages sent by the wireless device  12  and received by the gateway  16  may be, for example, Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP). The gateway  16  also performs content encoding, such as encoding of wireless markup language (WML) into binary format and compilation of WMLScripts. Gateway  16  may reside within the wireless carrier&#39;s network but may also reside within a corporate business environment. 
   The weather information server  20  may be, for example, a web server that serves weather-related information via the network  18 . The weather information may include, for example, weather-related warnings. The warnings may be, for example, flood warnings, special marine warnings, non-precipitation warnings, winter storm warnings, tornado warnings, hurricane warnings, severe thunderstorm warnings, coastal flood warnings, or flash flood warnings. An example of the server  20  is a server maintained by the National Weather Service as found at www.nws.noaa.gov. 
     FIG. 2  shows a more detailed schematic of a wireless network  30 , and especially the gateway  16 , according to one embodiment of the present invention. The network  30  includes wireless device  12 , MSC  14 , Nrouters  32  and  34 , protocol handlers  36  and  38 , a user database  40 , a message store  42 , and a mail router  44 . Wireless network  30  may use, for example, Mobitex® technology of the Cingular Interactive Intelligent Wireless Network service provided by Cingular Wireless. The Mobitex® network is a two-way wireless data service that can be connected with other complementary networks. A wireless data service such as the Mobitex® network includes a hierarchy of communications systems that can provide nationwide wireless service through a network of base stations and local switches under the control of higher order regional switches or exchanges. 
   The components of the gateway  16  may be connected over an internal network  46 ,  48 , and  50 , which may be a local area network (LAN). One or more wireless network exchanges such as Mobitex® regional switches  14  and  52 , which may reside at separate locations, communicate with the gateway  16  through Nrouters  32  and  34 . The communication between regional switch  14  and the Nrouters  32 ,  34  may use, for example, an X.25 protocol. Nrouters  32  and  34 , in turn, communicate with protocol handlers  36  and  38  over internal network  46  using, for example, X-sockets. 
   Protocol handlers  36 ,  38  use data from user database machine  40  to communicate externally to gateway  16  via network  50 . The mail router  44  is connected to internal network  50  and handles inbound and outbound communications traffic with an external network such as the Internet  18 , as well as X-sockets traffic. If necessary, a separate X-sockets machine and backup machine (not shown) can be added. 
   Protocol handlers  36  and  38  process information contained in user database machines, such as user database  40 . Additionally, each protocol handler maintains a database cache, i.e., a small, fast memory holding recently accessed data, to speed up internal network communications and to limit database access requests over the LAN. The protocols handled by protocol handlers  36 ,  38  specify that message storage and internal email access may be handled by the UNIX standard Network File System (NFS) distributed file system from SUNSOFT, which allows data to be shared across the network regardless of the protocol. 
   The message store  42  is responsible for, among other things, delivering a mail message to a recipient or receiving a mail message from a sender. Thus, the message store  42  may contain various routing and delivery program modules necessary to ensure that a mail message is either delivered to a recipient, or forwarded to other components for delivery to a recipient. 
     FIG. 3  is a flowchart of a process for providing wireless weather information according to one embodiment of the present invention. The process described in connection with  FIG. 3  may be implemented on the gateway  16  using, for example, software coded in, for example, the C, C ++ , or Java computer languages. Such software may be embodied in a computer-readable medium such as, for example, a floppy diskette, a compact disc (CD), a magnetic tape cartridge, or any suitable magnetic/electromagnetic storage medium. At step  100 , the gateway  16  accesses the weather information server  20 . At step  102 , the weather information is obtained from the server  20 . At step  104 , the gateway  16  determines whether the weather information contains any warnings relating to a user that has, for example, specified that they want weather warnings for a specific geographical area or areas to be relayed to them. The gateway  16  may determine whether a warning relates to a user by, for example, first retrieving user information relating to the user (e.g. a weather warning profile) from the user database  40 . Such user information may include, for example, the identity of the user, the wireless device address of the user&#39;s device  12 , and the geographical area or areas for which the user wants weather warning information. The gateway  16  may then search the weather information to determine if any weather warnings relate to the geographical area or areas that the user has specified. 
   If a warning relates to the user, the warning text and an identifying string are parsed from the information at step  106 . The warning (i.e. a subset of the weather information) may be delineated from other portions of the information, and thus parsed, based on separators in the text or source language of the information. At step  108 , the gateway  16  checks to see if, based on the identifying string, the warning has already been sent to the user. Such a check avoids the transmission of duplicate warnings to a user. If the warning has not been previously sent to the user, the warning is sent to the user at step  110 . The process then advances to step  112 , where the gateway  16  determines if the weather information has been checked for all users that have asked to be informed of weather warnings. Likewise, the process advances to step  112  if it was determined that there are no warnings relating to the user as determined at step  104  or if it is determined that the warning was already sent at step  108 . 
   If the weather information has not been checked for all users that have asked to be informed of weather information, the process advances to step  104  to check for warnings for another user. If there are no further users for which weather information needs to be checked, the process proceeds to step  114 , where the gateway  16  determines if there are any warnings that have not been delivered to a user and that have expired. If a user&#39;s wireless device  12  is not active on the wireless network  10  (i.e. it is off the air) and a warning was sent to the wireless device  12 , the wireless device  12  will not receive the warning. Thus, at step  114 , the gateway  16  checks the text of all undelivered warnings to determine if each of the undelivered warnings (if any) has expired. 
   If there are undelivered and expired warnings as determined at step  114 , such warnings are deleted so that they will not be delivered to the wireless device  12  when the user activates the device on the network  10 . The process then advances to step  118 . Likewise, if there are no undelivered and expired warnings as determined at step  114 , the process advances to step  118 . 
   Alternatively, instead of checking for undelivered and expired warnings, the gateway may place an expiration date and time on the message containing the warning. The message would thus expire without intervention by the gateway  16 . 
   The gateway  16  can be configured to access the weather information server  20  at periodic intervals such as, for example, every 5 minutes. At step  118 , the gateway  16  determines if the periodic interval has elapsed. If the interval has not elapsed, the process stays at step  118  until the interval has elapsed, at which time the process returns to step  100  to access the weather information server  20 . 
     FIG. 4  is an example of weather information that may be obtained from the weather information server  20  at step  102  of  FIG. 3 . As can be seen in  FIG. 4 , the weather information indicates a winter weather advisory for various counties in Pennsylvania. Thus, if a user of a wireless device  12  requested weather information relating to one or all of those counties, the gateway  16  would deliver the text or a portion of the text of the weather information to the wireless device  12  as, for example, a text message.  FIG. 5  is an example of the source markup language (HTML) of the weather information of  FIG. 4 . 
   While several embodiments of the invention have been described, it should be apparent, however, that various modifications, alterations and adaptations to those embodiments may occur to persons skilled in the art with the attainment of some or all of the advantages of the present invention. It is therefore intended to cover all such modifications, alterations and adaptations without departing from the scope and spirit of the present invention as defined by the appended claims.