Control of the transmission of a voice signal over a bluetooth® radio link

• US 9,456,296 B2
• Filed: 07/26/2012
• Issued: 09/27/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 07/29/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson
• Original Assignee: ST-Ericcson SA (Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson)
• Inventors: Wernaers, Yves
• Primary Examiner(s): Trandai, Cindy
• Application Number:
  US14/131,333
• Publication Number:
  US 20140162555A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,524 Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 19/012 Comfort noise or silence coding
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/80 Services using short range communication, e.g. near-field communication [NFC], radio-frequency identification [RFID] or low energy communication
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 76/28 Discontinuous transmission [DTX]; Discontinuous reception [DRX]
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 84/18 Self-organising networks, e.g. ad-hoc networks or sensor networks

Abstract

It is proposed a method for controlling the transmission of a sampled voice signal over a Bluetooth® radio link. The method comprises the steps of:

• • a) monitoring the sampled voice signal for detecting whether the sampled voice signal comprises a number of consecutive silence samples; and
  • b) halting the transmission of the sampled voice signal over the Bluetooth® radio link after having transmitted said consecutive silence samples.

Claims

1. A method for controlling the transmission of a sampled voice signal over a Bluetooth®

radio link, the method comprising the steps of;

a) monitoring, by a monitoring unit of a controller, the sampled voice signal;

b) detecting, by a detection unit of the controller, whether the sampled voice signal comprises a number of consecutive silence samples and detecting the number of consecutive silence samples, wherein the number of consecutive silence samples is dynamically determined to automatically change a threshold value representing a minimum number of silence samples to be detected before halting the transmission of the sampled voice signal over the Bluetooth®

radio link and wherein the threshold value is dynamically determined based on a voice signal volume; and

c) halting, by a protocol handler of the controller, the transmission of the sampled voice signal over the Bluetooth®

radio link after having transmitted said consecutive silence samples, wherein a codec of a transmitter is emptied before halting the transmission.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising, after step b), the steps of:

c) monitoring the sampled voice signal for detecting whether the sampled voice signal comprises voice samples; and

d) starting the transmission of the sampled voice signal over the Bluetooth®

radio link according to the detection in step c).

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the sampled voice signal is sent over the Bluetooth®

radio link in packets, the method further comprising, after step b), the step of;

e) maintaining the Bluetooth®

radio link by sending time to time one or more packet(s) over the Bluetooth®

radio link.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the step e) comprises the steps of:

f) counting the time elapsed between the current time and the time at which the latest packet was sent over the Bluetooth®

radio link;

g) sending one or more packet(s) over the Bluetooth®

radio link for maintaining the Bluetooth®

radio link when the elapsed time reaches a predetermined value; and

h) applying again steps f) and g) with respect to the latest packet sent at step g).

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the Bluetooth®

radio link is one of a synchronous connection-oriented link or an enhanced synchronous connection-oriented link.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein only a single timer is used, and the single timer counts an elapsed time between a current time and a time at which a latest packet was transmitted over the Bluetooth®

radio link.

7. A computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer readable medium, having thereon a computer program comprising program instructions, the computer program being loadable into a data-processing unit and adapted to cause execution of the method according to claim 1 when the computer program is run by the data-processing unit.

8. A controller for controlling the transmission of a sampled voice signal over a Bluetooth®

radio link, the controller comprising;

a monitoring unit adapted to monitor the sampled voice signal;

a detection unit adapted to detect whether the sampled voice signal comprises a number of consecutive silence samples and to detect the number of consecutive silence samples, wherein the number of consecutive silence samples is dynamically determined to automatically change a threshold value representing a minimum number of silence samples to be detected before halting the transmission of the sampled voice signal over the Bluetooth®

radio link and wherein the threshold value is dynamically determined based on a voice signal volume; and

a protocol handler adapted to halt the transmission of the sampled voice signal over the Bluetooth®

radio link after having transmitted said consecutive silence samples, wherein a codec of a transmitter is emptied before the transmission is halted.

9. The controller of claim 8, wherein:

the detection unit is further adapted to detect whether the sampled voice signal comprises voice samples; and

the protocol handler is further adapted to start the transmission of the sampled voice signal over the Bluetooth®

radio link according to the detection of the detection unit.

10. The controller of claim 8, wherein the protocol handler is further adapted to maintaining the Bluetooth®

radio link by sending time to time one or more packet(s) over the Bluetooth®

radio link.

11. The controller of claim 10, further comprising a timer adapted to count the time elapsed between the current time and the time at which the latest packet was sent over the Bluetooth®

radio link, and wherein the protocol handler is further adapted to send one or more packet(s) over the Bluetooth®

radio link for maintaining the Bluetooth®

radio link when the elapsed time reaches a predetermined value.

12. The controller of claim 11, wherein the memory is further adapted to store predetermined value to be reached by the elapsed time.

13. The controller of one of claim 8, further comprising a memory adapted to store the number of consecutive silence samples to be detected in the sampled voice signal for halting the transmission of the sampled voice signal over the Bluetooth®

radio link.

14. The controller of claim 8, wherein the protocol handler is further adapted to handle a synchronous connection-oriented Bluetooth®

radio link and/or an enhanced synchronous connection-oriented Bluetooth®

radio link.

15. An electronic device, comprising:

a Bluetooth®

module; and

a controller according to claim 8 for controlling the transmission of a voice signal by the Bluetooth®

module over a Bluetooth®

radio link.

16. The electronic device of claim 15, further comprising:

a memory adapted to store a computer program for controlling the execution of one or more units of the controller.