JP2002341975A - Information processing apparatus, resume control method, and operation mode control method - Google Patents

Abstract

(57) [Summary] [PROBLEMS] To provide an information processing apparatus that enables a user to set an arbitrary wireless signal as a condition for resume recovery. A wireless communication unit has a table for selecting a wireless signal for activating a resume function from a plurality of receivable wireless signals, and the information processing apparatus is in a power saving operation state. In this case, when any wireless signal is received, it is determined whether or not the received wireless signal is selected to activate the resume function by referring to this table. When it is determined that the information processing apparatus has been selected to activate the resume function, the wireless communication unit 6 generates a trigger for returning the information processing apparatus from the power saving operation state to the normal operation state by the interrupt control unit. 5 and the clock control unit 7.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus having a wireless communication function, and a resume control method and an operation mode control method of the information processing apparatus. The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus that can be set, a resume control method and an operation mode control method for the information processing apparatus.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, PDAs (Personal Digital Assis
Various types of portable information devices that can be driven by a battery, such as tant) and mobile terminals, have been developed. Many of these types of information devices have a wireless communication function of transmitting and receiving data to and from other information devices via a wireless public network, and thus, for example, it is widely used to connect to a company LAN from outside. Recently, Bluetooth and H
Devices having a wireless communication function for transmitting and receiving data to and from other information devices in a personal area, such as omeRF, are also becoming widespread.

[0003] On the other hand, this kind of information equipment has
Since it is required that the continuous operation time by the battery be extended as much as possible, various technologies for reducing power consumption have been adopted. For example, currently Windows (R) O
In personal computers where S is the mainstream, ACPI
(Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) has been introduced, thereby providing a platform for realizing power saving without significantly impairing user convenience.

[0004] Another problem with personal computers that employ the Windows (R) OS is that the OS itself has a long startup time. For this reason, a method has been used in which the power supply itself is not turned off even when not in use, but is suspended in a so-called power saving operation state, such as suspending or hibernation. As a result, while realizing the aforementioned low power consumption,
The problem of OS startup time was also solved.

[0005]

By the way, until now,
In order to return (resume) from the power saving operation state to the normal operation state, it is necessary for the user to take a specific action such as pressing the power button. However, in information devices having the above-described wireless communication function, it is considered that in general, such an opportunity to resume the operation will be given from an external information device.

[0006] On the other hand, in the case of wired communication, a method of resuming when a modem receives a packet addressed to its own station has been already practiced. Also, LAN
In this method, a method called WOL (Wake On LAN) for controlling the power supply of a personal computer from a remote place has been put to practical use.

However, these methods only control the resume only when a specific packet is received, and the user cannot arbitrarily set a packet as a condition for resuming the resume. Therefore, the operation is also fixed, and it has not been possible to flexibly respond to a user's request, for example, to change the condition of resume from time to time.

The present invention has been made in view of such circumstances, and provides an information processing apparatus and a resume control method for the information processing apparatus, which enable a user to set an arbitrary radio signal as a condition for resuming resume. And an operation mode control method.

[0009]

In order to achieve the above-mentioned object, the present invention relates to an information processing apparatus having a resume function for shifting from a power saving operation state to a normal operation state. Selecting means for selecting a wireless signal for activating the resume function from a plurality of wireless signals received by the means; and determining whether the wireless signal received by the wireless communication means is the wireless signal selected by the selecting means Determining means for determining, and when the received wireless signal is determined to be the selected wireless signal by the determining means, activates the resume function to change the device from a power saving operation state to a normal operation state. An information processing apparatus comprising: a resume control unit for performing a transition.

In the information processing apparatus according to the present invention, a so-called trigger condition can be set by setting an arbitrary radio signal from a plurality of radio signals as a condition for resuming the resume operation. It is possible to flexibly respond to user requests such as changing.

[0011]

An embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing an example of a hardware configuration of an information processing apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention.

This information processing device is a portable information device that can be driven by a battery, such as a PDA or a mobile terminal. As shown in FIG. 1, a CPU 1, a storage unit 2, an external input unit 3, a display It has a unit 4, an interrupt control unit 5, a wireless communication unit 6, and a clock control unit 7.

The CPU 1 controls the entire information processing apparatus, and operates in accordance with descriptions of various programs including an operating system (OS) stored in the storage unit 2. The storage unit 2 is a memory device for storing various programs including an OS describing an operation procedure of the CPU 1 and various data input / output from the programs.

The external input unit 3 controls the input of a user interface in the information processing apparatus.
Transmit to U1. On the other hand, the display unit 4 controls output of a user interface in the information processing apparatus, and controls display of image data created by the CPU 1 on an LCD or the like.

The interrupt control unit 5 receives an interrupt factor signal from each unit, generates an interrupt signal for the CPU 1, and realizes a CPU interrupt. The wireless communication unit 6 executes wireless connection with another information processing apparatus by infrared communication such as IrDA or RF communication such as Bluetooth. The clock control unit 7 supplies an operation clock to the digital circuit of each unit. In particular, the clock control unit 7 can control the clock supply by an event notification from the wireless communication unit 6.

Next, the basic operation of the information processing apparatus with low power consumption will be described.

Here, it is assumed that this information processing apparatus has at least three operating states under the control of the OS and the clock control unit 7. The definition of these operating states is shown in FIG.
FIG. 3 and FIG. 4 show the transition of the operation state.

As shown in FIG. 2, there are three operating states of this information processing apparatus: "non-energized state", "low power consumption state", and "energized state". The “non-energized state” is a state in which the power is turned off, and the “low power consumption state” is a state in which the clock is supplied only to the minimum necessary blocks including the wireless communication unit 6. Is basically C
The clock is supplied to all blocks including PU1.

FIGS. 3 and 4 show the state of transition between the three operating states of "non-energized state", "low power consumption state", and "energized state". Particularly important transition types are (2) and (5). This operation transition is called a suspend (or hibernation) and a resume, respectively, in the ACPI adopted in the current Windows (R) OS.
Here, too, we will call it this way.

In the low power consumption state, power is supplied to only the minimum necessary blocks as compared with the power-on state, so that power consumption can be greatly reduced. In addition, since the information in the memory at the time of booting the OS (when the power is on) is held as it is (or is simulated by temporarily saving to a hard disk or the like), at the time of resume, It is possible to make a transition to the energized state in a significantly shorter time than when the OS is started from the normal non-energized state. This is more remarkable in a high-performance, high-load OS such as the Windows (R) OS.

Here, a specific procedure for resuming resume in the information processing apparatus will be described.

Normally, when the resume is resumed as described above, the user presses the resume switch (the power button is often used) of the information processing apparatus. However, the wireless communication function, especially R
In the case of an information processing device having a wireless communication function using F, these events can be generated from outside without touching the main device. Hereinafter, this mechanism will be described in detail.

As described above, in this information processing apparatus,
The clock is supplied to the wireless communication unit 6 even in the low power consumption operation state. Therefore, even when the CPU 1 is stopped (the clock supply to the CPU 1 is stopped), the wireless communication unit 6 can operate. In such a state, it is assumed that the wireless communication unit 6 has received trigger information (which will be described later in detail) serving as a resume return condition. Then, the wireless communication unit 6 gives a clock supply trigger to the clock control unit 7, and in response to this, the clock control unit 7 starts supplying a clock to each block. At this time, it is not necessary to supply the clock to all the blocks, but it is necessary to supply the clock to at least the CPU 1. At the same time, the wireless communication unit 6 issues an interrupt request to the interrupt control unit 5,
The interrupt controller 5 issues an interrupt request to the CPU 1.

When the supply of the clock to the CPU 1 is started, the CPU 1 accepts the interrupt request, and the OS analyzes the cause of the interrupt to recognize that the interrupt is the resume return interrupt, and the normal operation is performed. Perform a state transition.

Next, trigger information serving as the above-mentioned resume condition will be described. First, a general wireless communication system will be described. IrDA, Blue
Personal wireless communications such as tooth can be roughly classified into the following three states.

(1) Discovery waiting state: A state in which a communication partner is to be found.

(2) Connection waiting state: A state in which a specific device is specified to establish a connection.

(3) connection state: a state where a connection is established with a specific device.

Further, a description will be given of a situation that can occur in each state.

(1) Discovery Waiting State In this case, a discovery message for collecting information of the own station (usually address information unique to a device) is provided.
e can originate from any terminal.

(2) Connection Waiting State In this case, a connection message may be generated from an arbitrary device that knows its own address.

(3) Connection State In this case, there is a possibility that arbitrary information may be sent from a device for which connection has been established.

The information processing apparatus can provide a more comfortable use environment by optimizing the standby state of the device in the low power consumption operation state, that is, the resume recovery condition. And
More specifically, for example, the wireless communication unit 6 has a table as shown in FIG. 5, and performs filtering of the resume return condition based on this table. The setting of this table is executed by a so-called utility program stored in the storage unit 2.

Here, with reference to FIG. 6, an operation procedure relating to the resume of the information processing apparatus will be described.

After the information processing apparatus shifts to the low power consumption state (step A1), when a message is received,
The wireless communication unit 6 first identifies this message (step A2). The wireless communication unit 6 refers to the table shown in FIG. 5 to determine whether the message is a message to be resumed (step A3), and if the message is a message to be resumed (step A3).
YES), the interrupt control unit 5 and the clock control unit 7
Trigger for resume operation (Step A)
4) As a result, the information processing apparatus is shifted to the normal operation state (step A5).

For example, when a PC (personal computer) in a luggage is resumed from his / her own mobile phone as necessary, the PC in the suspended state should trigger the activation condition by a message from the mobile phone. (See FIG. 7).

Therefore, in such a case, the PC is replaced by c
In the connection waiting state, the setting is made such that the resume is resumed only when a connection message is generated from the mobile phone. In other words, only the condition 3 in the table shown in FIG.

By performing such filtering, it is possible to prevent the resume from returning in a situation not intended by the user.

On the other hand, when an advertisement from a shopping district enters a PDA in a pocket as a message, it is not considered that a specific information processing apparatus accesses the PDA (see FIG. 8). .

Therefore, in such a case, the PDA is placed in the discovery waiting state,
When the very message is entered, the system resumes and notifies the user. More specifically, only the condition 2 in the table shown in FIG.

As described above, the information processing apparatus is capable of selectively determining a plurality of resume return factors as needed, thereby enabling the
It is possible to provide a suitable operation environment.

Here, the resume return condition has been described as an example, but the filtering method described above is not limited to this. The present invention can also be applied to automatically shift to a mode.

[0044]

As described above in detail, according to the present invention, it is possible to perform filtering of a so-called trigger condition for setting an arbitrary radio signal from a plurality of radio signals as a condition for resuming a resume operation. It is possible to flexibly respond to a user's request such as changing the condition of resume from time to time.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing an example of a hardware configuration of an information processing apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is an exemplary view showing a definition of an operation state of the information processing apparatus according to the embodiment.

FIG. 3 is an exemplary first view showing a state of transition of an operation state of the information processing apparatus according to the embodiment;

FIG. 4 is an exemplary second diagram illustrating how an operation state of the information processing apparatus according to the embodiment changes;

FIG. 5 is an exemplary view showing a table provided in the wireless communication unit 6 of the information processing apparatus according to the embodiment;

FIG. 6 is an exemplary flowchart for explaining the operation procedure of the information processing apparatus according to the embodiment, which is related to resuming from resume;

FIG. 7 is an exemplary first diagram for describing a setting example of resume return in the information processing apparatus of the embodiment.

FIG. 8 is an exemplary second diagram for describing a setting example of resume in the information processing apparatus of the embodiment.

[Explanation of symbols]

 DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 ... CPU 2 ... Storage part 3 ... External input part 4 ... Display part 5 ... Interrupt control part 6 ... Wireless communication part 7 ... Clock control part

Claims (4)

[Claims] 1. An information processing apparatus having a resume function for transitioning from a power saving operation state to a normal operation state, comprising: a wireless communication unit; and activating the resume function from a plurality of wireless signals received by the wireless communication unit. Selecting means for selecting a radio signal to be made; determining means for determining whether the wireless signal received by the wireless communication means is the wireless signal selected by the selecting means; and the wireless signal received by the determining means An information processing apparatus comprising: a resume control unit that activates the resume function to shift the apparatus from a power saving operation state to a normal operation state when it is determined that the apparatus is the selected wireless signal. . 2. An information processing apparatus having a plurality of operation modes, comprising: a wireless communication unit; and a plurality of wireless signals received by the wireless communication unit, wherein the operation mode of the device is changed from a first operation mode to a second operation mode.
Selecting means for selecting a wireless signal to be shifted to the operation mode, determining means for determining whether the wireless signal received by the wireless communication means is the wireless signal selected by the selecting means, and determining by the determining means Operating mode control means for shifting the operation mode of the device from the first operation mode to the second operation mode when a received radio signal is determined to be the selected radio signal. Information processing device. 3. A resume control method for an information processing apparatus having a wireless communication unit, having a resume function of shifting from a power saving operation state to a normal operation state, wherein the plurality of wireless signals received by the wireless communication unit Selecting a radio signal for activating the resume function from among the following; and determining whether the radio signal received by the radio communication unit is the selected radio signal; and Activating the resume function when the wireless signal is determined to be the selected wireless signal, and causing the apparatus to transition from a power saving operation state to a normal operation state. 4. An operation mode control method for an information processing apparatus having a plurality of operation modes and including a wireless communication unit, wherein the operation mode of the device is selected from a plurality of wireless signals received by the wireless communication unit. From the first operation mode to the second
Selecting a wireless signal to be shifted to the operation mode of the above, and determining whether or not the wireless signal received by the wireless communication means is the selected wireless signal; and wherein the received wireless signal is selected. And changing the operation mode of the device from the first operation mode to the second operation mode when it is determined that the radio signal has been transmitted.