Data link for multi-player game system using telephone lines
First Claim
1. A data transfer system for transferring game data and voice data over a single telephone line, the game data being data with a low tolerance for delay and the voice data being digitized voice to be transmitted in substantially real time, comprising:
- a frame generator, which outputs a frame symbol followed by frame data for each frame, thus framing a stream of frames wherein each frame is delimited at a beginning and an end by a frame symbol;
a voice signal digitizer, which converts a voice signal into a digital voice data stream;
a data mixer, coupled to receive the digital voice data stream from the voice signal digitizer and having an input for the game data, the data mixer comprising means for inserting the digital voice data into a frame as frame data without using an escape symbol sequence and means for inserting game data in the frame using the escape symbol sequence as a delimiter of game data; and
transmission means, coupled to the frame generator and the data mixer, for transmitting the stream of frames over the telephone line.
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Accused Products
Abstract
An improved data transfer system is provided to transfer game data over a telephone line with low delay even while a voice conversation is being transferred over the same telephone line. Voice data and game data are framed, in a modified HDLC framing scheme, with game data inserted, if necessary, into a frame which contains voice, so that the time needed to complete the frame is not added to the delay of the game data. The inserted game data need not be of a fixed length, as it is delimited within the voice data by an escape sequence not found in the voice data. The available bandwidth is efficiently used since frames of voice data are not necessarily sent during periods of silence and frames of game data or other data can be sent using the entire telephone line bandwidth. The data is framed at a point beyond the output of pre-existing games and data transfer programs, to allow for transparent insertion of voice into the frame stream.
44 Citations
11 Claims
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1. A data transfer system for transferring game data and voice data over a single telephone line, the game data being data with a low tolerance for delay and the voice data being digitized voice to be transmitted in substantially real time, comprising:
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a frame generator, which outputs a frame symbol followed by frame data for each frame, thus framing a stream of frames wherein each frame is delimited at a beginning and an end by a frame symbol; a voice signal digitizer, which converts a voice signal into a digital voice data stream; a data mixer, coupled to receive the digital voice data stream from the voice signal digitizer and having an input for the game data, the data mixer comprising means for inserting the digital voice data into a frame as frame data without using an escape symbol sequence and means for inserting game data in the frame using the escape symbol sequence as a delimiter of game data; and transmission means, coupled to the frame generator and the data mixer, for transmitting the stream of frames over the telephone line. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11)
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Specification