Speech transmission between terminals in different networks

• US 6,167,040 A
• Filed: 06/08/1999
• Issued: 12/26/2000
• Est. Priority Date: 10/10/1997
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Nokia Technologies Oy (Nokia Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Nokia Telecommunications Oy (Nokia Corporation)
• Inventors: Haeggstrom, Johan
• Primary Examiner(s): MARCELO, MELVIN C
• Application Number:
  US09/327,670
• Time in Patent Office: 567 Days
• Field of Search: 370/352-356
• US Class Current: 370/352
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/6418 Hybrid transport
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2012/6481 Speech, voice
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/70 Media network packetisation
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2207/18 wireless networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2207/20 hybrid systems
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 88/16 Gateway arrangements
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 88/181 Transcoding devices; Rate adaptation devices

Abstract

The invention concerns a system, which allows speech transmission between a mobile station and terminal equipment connected to a data network. The terminal equipment, preferably an Internet telephone, sends and receives data packets in accordance with the protocol of the data network in question and is provided with telephone characteristics. It has a speech coder in accordance with the mobile station system which synthesises the original speech from the speech parameters sent by the mobile station and contained in the data packets arriving from the data network and which correspondingly produces speech parameters for location in outgoing data packets. The speech parameters are conveyedas such between the mobile station and the terminal equipment without applying any additional coding to them. When the mobile telephone network is a packet switched network, it may be connected directly to the data network or, when the mobile telephone network is a circuit switched network, a gateway is used, which performs any necessary conversions, so that the call can be connected from one network to the other.

Claims

1. System for speech transmission between two pieces of terminal equipment, of which the first terminal equipment is a mobile station which is connected to a mobile telephone network through a radio link and the speech coder of which produces speech frames containing speech parameters, and the second terminal equipment is connected to a fixed network,

wherein

the fixed network is a data network conveys data packets and the second terminal equipment having telephone characteristics transmits and receives data packets in accordance with the protocol of the network in question,

the second terminal equipment has a speech coder in accordance with the mobile station system which synthesizes the original speech from the speech parameters sent by the mobile station contained in the data packets arriving from the data network and produces speech parameters for location in outgoing data packets,

the speech parameters are relayed as such between the terminal equipment without doing any further coding on them.

2. System as defined in claim 1, wherein the fixed network is an Internet network and the data packets are packets in accordance with the IP protocol.

3. System as defined in claim 1, wherein the mobile station network is a circuit switched network which is intended for speech transmission and in which speech parameters are also transmitted after decoding performed in a transcoder in speech frames in one or two least significant bits of the PCM samples.

4. System as defined in claim 3, wherein speech frames arriving from the fixed network in one or two least significant bits of PCM samples to the transcoder are transmitted further as such.

5. System as defined in claim 1, wherein between the mobile station network and the fixed network relaying data packets there is a gateway, which locates the speech parameters in the speech frames arriving from the mobile station network into data packets and, correspondingly, it locates the speech parameters in data packets arriving from the fixed network into speech frames of the mobile station network.

6. System as defined in claim 5, wherein the terminal equipment at the beginning of the call first gets in contact with the gateway.

7. System as defined in claim 6, wherein the mobile services switching center is in PCM connection with the gateway by way of a public switched telephone network PSTN.

8. System as defined in claim 6, wherein the gateway performs a number conversion between the number of the first terminal equipment used in the mobile telephone network and the number of the second terminal equipment connected to the fixed network.

9. System as defined in claim 1, wherein the mobile station network is a packet switched General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) network which is known as such and which is intended for data transmission, and that the speech parameters are transmitted in its normal data packets.

10. System as defined in claim 9, wherein the transmission of speech frames between the General Packet Radio Service network and the fixed network is implemented by using the IP network inter-face existing in the General Packet Radio Service network.