Suction device, information transmission method, and non-transitory computer readable medium

Inventors

Yamada, Manabu

Assignees

Japan Tobacco Inc

Abstract

A suction device includes a heating unit that heats a base material and generates an aerosol; a communication unit that receives, through a communication link, information indicating a profile stipulating an operation of the heating unit; and a control unit that controls the operation of the heating unit in accordance with the information indicating the profile. The information indicating the profile includes a combination of information indicating time and information indicating a parameter pertaining to the operation of the heating unit at said time.

Core Innovation

The disclosed invention relates to an inhaler device comprising a heater configured to heat a substrate to generate an aerosol, and a communicator configured to receive, through a communication link, information representing a profile defining an operation of the heater. The controller controls the operation of the heater in accordance with the information representing the profile, and the profile information includes a combination of information representing time and information representing a parameter related to the operation of the heater at the time.

The profile information can omit information representing a target value of the parameter related to the operation of the heater in a first time period. In such a case, the controller uses information representing a target value of the parameter related to the operation of the heater in a second time period as the information representing the target value for the first time period, where the second time period is one time period before the first time period. This omission and restoration scheme is applied to the remotely received profile information that defines heater operation.

To reduce communication volume, the heating profile is discretized into time sub-segments and transmitted as discrete data. At least some time sub-segments omit parameter values, and the omitted target and temporal change information is restored using the target value from an immediately preceding sub-segment. The disclosed compression modifications include differential profile data and coded profile data using a common lookup table that maps codes to time sub-segments and target parameters.

Claims Coverage

The document provides three independent claim sets: one for an inhaler device, one for a controlling method, and one for a non-transitory computer readable medium. Across these independent claims, the core inventive coverage is centered on controlling heater operation based on remotely received profile information that combines time and a heater-related parameter, including substitution of an omitted target value from an immediately preceding time period.

Overall, the independent claims require remotely received heater-operation profile information that combines time with a heater-related parameter, control of heater operation for heating a substrate to generate an aerosol based on that profile, and a rule that substitutes a missing target value for a first time period using a target value from the immediately preceding second time period.

Stated Advantages

Documented Applications