Intelligent voice bridging

• US 6,556,563 B1
• Filed: 09/11/2000
• Issued: 04/29/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 09/11/2000
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: R2 Solutions LLC (Acacia Research Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Yahoo! Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Yarlagadda, Madhu
• Primary Examiner(s): CANGIALOSI, SALVATORE A
• Application Number:
  US09/658,781
• Time in Patent Office: 960 Days
• Field of Search: 370/352, 370/353, 370/356, 370/401, 379/88.17, 379/90.01, 379/93.01
• US Class Current: 370/352
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2201/40 using speech recognition
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 7/006 Networks other than PSTN/ISDN providing telephone service, e.g. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) , including next generation networks with a packet-switched transport layer H04L65/00 takes precedence; aspects not specific to the type of network H04M3/00; special services in those networks H04M3/42
• CPC Class Codes: H04Q 11/0421 Circuit arrangements therefor
• CPC Class Codes: H04Q 2213/13034 A/D conversion, code compression/expansion
• CPC Class Codes: H04Q 2213/1305 Software aspects
• CPC Class Codes: H04Q 2213/13107 Control equipment for a part of the connection, distributed control, co-processing
• CPC Class Codes: H04Q 2213/13196 Connection circuit/link/trunk/junction, bridge, router, gateway
• CPC Class Codes: H04Q 2213/13204 Protocols
• CPC Class Codes: H04Q 2213/13216 Code signals, frame structure
• CPC Class Codes: H04Q 2213/13375 Electronic mail
• CPC Class Codes: H04Q 2213/13378 Speech recognition, speech analysis
• CPC Class Codes: H04Q 2213/13389 LAN, internet
• CPC Class Codes: H04Q 2213/13396 Signaling in general, in-band signalling

Abstract

An intelligent voice bridging system and process that scaleably extends the functionality of a VOIP telecommunication application by bridging data from external components into the VOIP data stream.

Claims

1. A method for coupling external components to a VOIP network during a connection to a user, said method comprising the acts of:

providing a voice converter for transcoding voice data between VOIP format and non-VOIP formats;

opening a VOIP port for sending voice data to and receiving voice data from the VOIP network;

opening a bridge port for sending voice data to and receiving voice data from an external component;

processing requests to determine whether voice data is to be received from the external component (upstream request) or sent to the external component (downstream request);

if voice data is to be sent to the external component during the connection with the user;

receiving voice data from the user through the VOIP network via the VOIP port, wherein the voice data requires processing in a VOIP format and a non-VOIP format;

if the external component is not able to process VOIP format voice data then sending data via the bridge port to the voice converter prior to routing data to the external component;

or

if the external component is able to process VOIP format voice data sending data via the bridge port directly to the external component;

if voice data is to be received from the external component during the connection with the user;

if the external component provides VOIP format voice data then sending data directly to the VOIP network via the bridge port and VOIP port;

or

if the external component does not provide VOIP format voice data,

first sending the voice data to the voice converter prior to sending the voice data to the VOIP network via the bridge port and the VOIP port to generate VOIP format voice data; and

caching the generated VOIP format voice data in a cache, wherein the cached VOIP format voice data may be provided to the VOIP network when a request for the voice data is received without sending the voice data to the voice converter.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising the acts of:

providing packets of voice data to said bridge port from an external component, with each packet of a designated portion of data including a specific session number; and

wherein caching the generated voice data comprises caching data packets having the specific session number.

3. The method of claim 2 further comprising the acts of:

requesting only the designated portion of data from data packets having one or more associated session numbers to be sent to the VOIP network via the VOIP port; and

transferring only cached data packets having the one or more associated session numbers via the VOIP port.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprising the acts of:

identifying silences in a voice data stream provided to the VOIP bridge;

transcoding voice data received between silences from VOIP data to ASR compatible data;

performing voice recognition on transcoded data to determine an appropriate response;

sending response voice data in VOIP format to the bridge port; and

transferring response voice data to the VOIP network via the VOIP port.

5. The method of claim 4, further comprising the acts of:

specifying the duration of a transfer so that multiple external components can be multiplexed.

6. A system for coupling external components, with one of the external components being a voice converter (VC) which converts voice data between VOIP and PSTN formats, to a VOIP telecommunication application running on a server computer having a CPU, memory, and coupled to a VOIP network, said system comprising:

a gateway access telecommunication server, comprising program code executed by the CPU, which launches a channel thread for each subscriber request, wherein a subscriber request comprises VOIP data that requires processing in a VOIP format and a non-VOIP format;

a call flow thread, launched by the channel thread and comprising program code executed by the CPU, which manages call flow between the subscriber and the VOIP telecommunication application;

an I/O thread, launched by said channel thread and comprising program code executed by the CPU, which responds to call flow commands and controls input and output of data between VOIP telecommunication application and VOIP network;

a bridge cache buffer;

a bridge port, managed by the I/O thread, for transferring data between an external component and the bridge cache buffer;

a VOIP port, managed by the call flow thread, for transferring voice data between the bridge port buffer and the VOIP network;

with the call flow thread commanding the I/O thread to transfer VOIP data directly to external components that process VOIP format voice data and to transfer VOIP data via the VC to external components that do not process VOIP format voice data and with the call flow thread commanding the I/O thread to transfer voice data directly from an external component that outputs voice data in VOIP format to the VOIP network and to transfer voice data from an external component that does not output voice data in VOIP format to the VOIP network via the VC to generate voice data in a VOIP format,

wherein the bridge cache buffer caches the generated VOIP data, wherein the cached VOIP format voice data may be provided to the VOIP network when a request for the voice data is received without sending the voice data to the VC.

7. A method for communicating with a user through a VOIP network using external components, wherein the external components comprise at least one external component capable of processing VOIP format voice data and at least one external component capable of processing non-VOIP format data, the method comprising:

connecting the user to a VOIP port through the VOIP network;

receiving VOIP format voice data through the VOIP network from the user, wherein the VOIP format voice data requires processing in a VOIP format and a non-VOIP format during the connection;

determining whether the VOIP format voice data requires processing in a VOIP format or a non-VOIP format;

if the VOIP format voice data should be processed in the VOIP format, bridging the VOIP format voice data directly to the at least one external component capable of processing VOIP format voice data;

if the VOIP format voice data should be processed in the non-VOIP format,

converting the VOIP format voice data to the non-VOIP format data;

bridging the non-VOIP format voice data to the at least one external component capable of processing VOIP format voice data;

determining whether voice data to be sent to the user through the VOIP network is VOIP format voice data or non-VOIP format voice data;

if the voice data is VOIP format voice data, sending the data directly to the user;

if the voice data is non-VOIP format voice data, converting the non-VOIP format voice data to VOIP format voice data;

sending the data to the user; and

caching the converted VOIP format voice data in a cache, wherein the cached VOIP format voice data may be provided to the VOIP network when a request for the voice data is received without converting the voice data from the non-VOIP format voice data to the VOIP format voice data.