Ventilator Network Address Allocation via Serial Mask
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Existing methods for assigning network addresses to fans in large networks are inefficient, requiring numerous manual operations or lengthy procedures, especially in large networks with many participants, leading to potential collisions and errors.
Innovation Solution
The method involves a control unit that repeats serial number requests with a modified mask to ensure unique address assignment, suppressing collisions and efficiently identifying fans by incrementing or decrementing specific positions in the serial number mask, minimizing the number of requests needed.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If manual switching operations are used to assign addresses to fans one by one, then each fan can be individually addressed, but the process requires numerous manual operations and is time-consuming
Solution Approach 1:
The system enables self-service address assignment where fans automatically receive unique addresses through the control unit without manual intervention. The control unit queries fans and automatically assigns addresses from the address space, eliminating the need for manual switching operations while maintaining efficient address allocation.
2Reliability
If the master queries the entire address space to check for duplicate random addresses, then unique addresses are assigned, but the procedure takes relatively long time in large networks
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by having fans select random addresses from the entire address space before verification. The control unit then queries fans to detect duplicates and resolves conflicts by having affected fans select new addresses, eliminating the need to query the entire address space systematically while ensuring unique address assignment.
Solution Approach 2:
The control unit uses feedback from fan responses to detect duplicate address assignments. When a duplicate is detected, the system provides feedback to the involved fans to select new addresses, continuously refining the address allocation until all addresses are unique, thereby reducing the time required compared to exhaustive address space querying.
3Reliability
If the network interface suppresses response to prevent collision, then transmission errors are avoided, but other fans with matching serial numbers are not recognized
Solution Approach 1:
The system segments the address assignment process into multiple phases using different mask lengths. Initially, a shorter mask is used to group fans by broader serial number patterns, allowing multiple fans to be identified in parallel. As the process progresses, the mask length increases to resolve individual addresses, balancing collision prevention with identification speed.
Solution Approach 2:
The mask length used for serial number matching is dynamically adjusted during the address assignment process. The system starts with a shorter mask to quickly group fans and progresses to longer masks for precise individual identification. This dynamic adjustment optimizes both collision prevention and identification speed by adapting the matching granularity to the current stage of the process.
Data Source
Figure 1
Figure 2
AI summary
The method involves providing an adjustable network address memory (9) for each of ventilators (3,4,5) and assigning an identical start-address as network address to all of the ventilators. A serial number queries is sent with a serial number mask which are being sent to the network address. The ventilators unique network addresses are assigned or the serial number mask is modified for serial number queries by using a control unit (1). Independent claims are included for the following: (1) ventilator; and (2) control unit.