An extended voice over internet protocol

An extended voice over internet protocol

1 is a diagram conceptually illustrating a conventional Bluetooth stack.

Figure 2 conceptually illustrates a universal access Bluetooth profile including a serial port profile and a cordless phone profile;

FIG. 3 conceptually illustrates a K3 cordless phone profile that may be used as the cordless phone profile shown in FIG. 2; FIG.

4 is a diagram conceptually illustrating a network in which a plurality of devices belonging to a set defined according to the present invention communicate with each other;

FIG. 5 is a conceptual diagram illustrating Bluetooth including a real-time, packet-enabled stack that may be used in the network shown in FIG. 4 in accordance with the present invention; FIG.

Fig. 6 conceptually illustrates an exemplary embodiment of a cordless phone profile stack that may be used in the Bluetooth stack shown in Fig. 5 in accordance with the present invention;

<backgroundart><p>BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION Field of the Invention [0002] The present invention relates generally to communication systems, and in particular to wireless communication systems.</p><p>In general, voice and data may be transmitted over wired and/or wireless networks using two basic switching technologies. In addition to the data provided by the modem, typical voice telephone calls are transmitted using a circuit-switched connection. Alternatively, voice and data may be transmitted over a packet-switched network using the Voice Internet Protocol (often referred to as VoIP). Both circuit-switched and packet-switched networks may include wired and/or wireless connections. Voice Internet protocol calls are becoming more common, at least in part because VoIP can co-ordinate voice and data communications. Moreover, voice transmission over VoIP can reduce operating costs. In addition to conventional land line telephones and cellular telephones, VoIP can be used to include voice communications in devices such as personal digital assistants, laptop computers, desktop computers, and the like.</p><p>Although Internet protocols such as VoIP are used to implement a wide range of networks (eg, local area networks, wide area networks, and WWW), alternative communication protocols may also be used to form other types of networks. For example, the Bluetooth standard is commonly used to implement short-range wireless networks having a limited set of member devices, often referred to as piconets. Bluetooth compatible devices use frequency-hopping technology to transmit data and/or voice in the Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) frequency bands at about 2.4 GHz. The Bluetooth standard is well known to those skilled in the art, and for clarity, only those features of the Bluetooth standard relevant to the present invention will be described herein.</p><p>Devices conforming to the Bluetooth standard may transmit voice communications over a wireless interface or wireless communication link using circuit-switched protocols to preserve the real-time nature of voice. The Bluetooth standard also allows the devices to transmit data using the Internet Protocol. Due to some of the frequency-hopping characteristics of the Bluetooth standard, a communication link formed according to the Bluetooth standard has a reasonable chance of maintaining link quality in the presence of interference. Thus, the Bluetooth standard is a good candidate for including VoIP-based voice and data communication solutions. However, the current Bluetooth standard also suffers from a number of deficiencies that may interfere with, or interfere with, implementations of VoIP-based voice and data communications within the standard.</p><p>1 conceptually shows a conventional Bluetooth stack 100 . Those skilled in the art should appreciate that the conventional Bluetooth stack 100 may include additional elements not shown in FIG. 1 for clarity. One of ordinary skill in the art should appreciate that the elements and/or combinations thereof shown in FIG. 1 may be implemented in a single device or a plurality of devices. The Bluetooth stack 100 includes a Wireless Application Environment (WAE) block 105, a Telephony Control Protocol Specification Binary (TCS Bin) block 110, an audio block 115, and/or Or it may receive various communications in other blocks specified in the Bluetooth specification.</p><p>In one example, packets are received by a WAE block 110 , including a Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) block 120, a User Datagram Protocol (UDP) block 122, and a transmission control protocol. Through a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) block 124 , an Internet Protocol (IP) block 126 , and a Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) block 128 , the radio frequency It may be forwarded to a Radio Frequency Communication (RFCOMM) block 130 , where it may be multiplexed with other packet flows. The RFCOMM block 130 transmits a multiplexed signal to a Logical Link Control and Adaptation Protocol (L2CAP) block that may also receive signals from the Transmission Control Protocol Specification Binary (TCS Bin) block 110 ( 132). The L2CAP block 132 provides a signal over the host controller interface 134 to the asynchronous access controller 136 of the baseband block 138 . As another example, audio signals may be received by audio block 115 that provides a signal to synchronous controller 140 at baseband block 138 . Synchronous controller 140 typically attempts to maintain predefined quality and delay limits for audio signals. The baseband block 138 provides signals to the Bluetooth radio 142 for transmission over a communication link, also referred to as an air interface, under the control of a Link Management Protocol (LMP) block 144 . </p><p>2 conceptually illustrates a universal access Bluetooth profile 200 . Those skilled in the art should appreciate that profiles may specify options at each protocol layer in addition to parameter ranges for each protocol. Those skilled in the art should also appreciate that the universal access Bluetooth profile 200 may include ancillary profiles not shown in FIG. 2 for clarity. The universal access Bluetooth profile 200 includes a TCS Bin profile 205 , a serial port profile 210 , and other profiles that may be defined by the Bluetooth standard.</p><p>The current Bluetooth standard may provide voice services using either a local area network access profile 215 or a cordless phone profile 220 . The cordless phone profile 220 relies on the TCS bin profile 205 and the local area network access profile 215 relies on the serial port profile 210 . According to the Bluetooth standard, the first profile is considered to depend on the second protocol file if it reuses parts of the second profile as the first profile implicitly and/or explicitly references the second profile. Features of the local area network access profile and cordless phone profile 220 related to voice communication are described below.</p><p>Cordless phone profile 220 defines two roles: gateway and terminal. Cordless phone profile 220 typically supports a topology comprising one gateway and a small number of terminals, eg, between 1 and 7. The gateway may be coupled to an external network, such as an Internet Protocol based network. The gateway acts as a terminal endpoint from the point of view of the external network and handles all interactions through the network. The gateway is considered a central point for external calls, which means handling all setup requests to and/or from the external network. For example, the gateway may receive voice packets that are de-encapsulated native G.711 or G.732 voice packets. Gateway devices may include public switched telephone network (PSTN) home base stations, Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) home base stations, GSM gateways, satellite gateways, and H.323 gateways. A terminal is a wireless user terminal that may include cordless phones, dual-mode cellular/cordless phones, desktop computers, laptop computers, personal digital assistants, and the like. For example, the terminal may be a 3-in-1 phone operating according to the K3 cordless phone profile.</p><p>FIG. 3 conceptually illustrates a K3 cordless phone profile stack 300 that may be implemented using the cordless phone profile 200 shown in FIG. 2 . Those skilled in the art should appreciate that only those elements of the K3 cordless phone profile stack 300 relevant to the present invention are described herein. The voice packets are received by the telephony application 305 which provides voice packets and other control signals to the TCS Bin block 310 and the speech synchronization controller 315 . Within the TCS bin block 310 , a call control (CC) block 320 interfaces 325 with a speech synchronization controller 315 and an interface 330 with a link manager protocol (LMP) block 335 . and manages the voice channel. For example, call control block 320 may connect and/or disconnect internal speech paths by providing signals to speech synchronization controller 315 via interface 325 , and link the signals via interface 330 . A manager protocol (LMP) block 335 may establish and/or release voice synchronization control links. A link manager protocol (LMP) block 335 is coupled to an asynchronous control block 337 .</p></backgroundart><abstractproblem><p>Interfaces 325 , 330 may allow speech synchronization controller 315 to directly control the voice path from telephony application 305 to synchronous controller 340 at baseband 345 . Thus, the telephony application 305 typically achieves guaranteed quality and/or delay characteristics. However, the ability of the telephony application 305 to provide packet data is compromised since the voice path including the speech synchronization controller 315 does not include any protocol layers for processing the packet data. As another example, a phone operating according to the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) protocol handles voice applications in a similar manner. Thus, this technique does not allow voice communications from the telephony application 305 to be treated homogeneously with data traffic streams that may undesirably limit system flexibility. As a result, this technology cannot take advantage of the various features of future 4G systems. </p><p>Referring again to FIG. 2 , voice communications may also be provided using the local area network access profile 215 of the serial port profile 210 . In this way, packets received from a VoIP application are treated in the same way as any other local area network access, ie, the VoIP application is perceived as another Internet application using the Internet Protocol as the preferred transport mechanism. However, this method is inconsistent with VoIP application in any title, warranty or delay warranties. For example, VoIP applications are connected via an asynchronous connection at the baseband layer, such as the asynchronous connection 136 of the baseband 138 shown in FIG. As another example, packets associated with a VoIP application are serially multiplexed with packets from other applications 146 using an RFCOMM serial port, such as RFCOMM 130 shown in FIG. 1 . Packets from other applications 146 may contend and/or collide with the VoIP application. The use of the serial port profile 210 may also allow packets provided by a VoIP application to pass through more control blocks in the Bluetooth stack.</p><p>The present invention addresses the effects of one or more of the problems described above.</p></abstractproblem>

<p>In one embodiment of the present invention, a method is provided for transmitting voice or other time-sensitive packet data over a network in which a plurality of devices belonging to a prescribed set communicate with each other. The method includes receiving at least one first packet comprising voice data, processing the at least one first packet using a real-time packet-enabled stack to form at least one second packet, and and providing the at least one second packet to the synchronous controller for transmission over the network.</p><p>In another embodiment of the present invention, a method is provided for receiving voice or other time-sensitive packet data from a first network in which a plurality of devices belonging to a prescribed set communicate with each other. The method includes receiving at least one packet comprising voice data from a first network, providing the at least one packet to a synchronous controller, and processing the at least one packet using a real-time packet-enabled stack. include that</p><p>BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS The invention may be understood by reference to the following description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings in which like reference numerals indicate like elements.</p><p>While the invention is susceptible to various modifications and alternative forms, specific embodiments thereof have been shown by way of example in the drawings and have been described in detail herein. However, the description herein of specific embodiments is not intended to limit the invention to the specific forms disclosed, but on the contrary, it is intended that all modifications, equivalents, and It will be understood that alternatives are included.</p><p>Described embodiments of the present invention are described below. For clarity, not all features of an actual implementation are described in this specification. In the development of any such actual embodiment, it will be appreciated that various implementation-specific decisions may be made to achieve the specific goals of the developers, such as system-related and business-related restrictions that may vary from one implementation to another. Moreover, it will be appreciated that such a development effort would be complex and time-consuming, but would nevertheless be a routine task for those skilled in the art having the benefit of this disclosure.</p><p>FIG. 4 conceptually illustrates a network 400 in which a plurality of devices 405 , 410 ( 1 to 3 ) belonging to a defined set 415 communicate with each other. The present invention will be described herein with respect to the Bluetooth standard. Thus, in the described embodiment, the defined set 415 is a piconet 415 conforming to the Bluetooth standard. The plurality of devices 405 , 410 ( 1-3 ) are Bluetooth-enabled devices, in particular device 405 is a master and devices 410 ( 1-3 ) are slaves. However, the present invention is not limited to the above Bluetooth standard. Those skilled in the art will appreciate that the Bluetooth standard is just one example of a standard that may be used to facilitate communication between a plurality of devices 410 ( 1 to 3 ) belonging to a defined set 415 . In alternative embodiments, any desired standard may be used, such as so-called "network-within-a-network" standards.</p><p>The piconet 415 shown in FIG. 4 includes one master 405 and three slaves 410 ( 1 to 3 ). However, those skilled in the art should understand that the present invention is not limited to four devices. In alternative embodiments, more or fewer slaves 410 ( 1-3 ) may be included in piconet 415 . For example, the Bluetooth standard typically allows one to seven slaves 410 ( 1-3 ) to be included in the piconet 415 . Each of the slaves 410 ( 1-3 ) may form a communication link 417 ( 1-3 ) with the master 405 . However, slaves 410 ( 1-3 ) typically do not form communication links with other slaves 410 ( 1-3 ).</p><p>The master 405 may also form a communication link 418 with the second network 420 . In one embodiment, the second network 420 is also Bluetooth-enabled, such as a piconet, when the master 405 establishes a communication link with a second master (not shown) in the second network 420 . is a network that has been However, the present invention is not limited to communications between Bluetooth-enabled networks. In alternative embodiments, the second network 420 may be any desired type of network. For example, the second network 420 may include networks conforming to the Internet protocol, such as a local area network, a wide area network, a WWW, an integrated services digital network (ISDN) network, an intranet, and the like. Alternatively, the second network 420 may include a public switched telephone network, a legacy telephone service (POTS) network, a cordless telephone network, a cellular telephone network, a satellite network, and the like. Those skilled in the art should appreciate that the second network 420 may also be comprised of various combinations of the networks described above. </p><p>Master 405 includes a real-time, packet-enabled stack 425 and slaves 410 ( 1-3 ) each include a real-time, packet-enabled stack 430 ( 1-3 ). . Real-time, packet-enabled stacks 425 , 430 ( 1-3 ) are a set of network protocol layers that work together, as will be described below. However, those skilled in the art will appreciate that the term stack may also refer to the actual software and/or hardware processing protocols defined by real-time, packet-enabled stacks 425 , 430 ( 1 to 3 ). will understand Some of the detailed descriptions herein exist ultimately in the light of software implementation processes including symbolic representations of operations on data bits within a memory of a computing system or computer device. These descriptions and representations are the means used by those skilled in the art to most effectively convey the substance of their research to those skilled in the art. Processes and operations require physical manipulation of physical quantities. Generally, though not necessarily, these quantities take the form of electrical, magnetic, or optical signals capable of being stored, transferred, combined, and otherwise manipulated. It has proven convenient in principle to always refer to these signals as bits, values, elements, symbols, characters, terms, numbers, etc. for reasons of common purpose.</p><p>It should be understood, however, that all these and similar terms are to be associated with the appropriate physical quantities, and are merely convenient labels applied to these quantities. Although not described in detail throughout this disclosure, or otherwise clear, these descriptions describe the manipulation of physical (electronic, magnetic, or optical) quantities within the storage of some electronic devices and other data similarly represented as physical quantities within the storage. It refers to the operation and processing of an electronic device, or transmission or display devices, that are transferred to Examples of terms representing these descriptions, such as "processing", "computing", "calculation", "determining", "indicating", etc. are not limiting.</p><p>It should also be noted that software implemented features of the present invention are typically encoded in some form of program storage medium or implemented over some form of delivery medium. The program storage medium may be magnetic (eg, a floppy disk or hard drive) or optical (eg, a compact disk read-only memory, or "CD-ROM"), and may be read-only or random access. Similarly, the transmission medium may be twisted pair, coaxial cable, optical fiber, a wireless communication link (sometimes referred to as a "wireless interface"), or some other suitable transmission medium known in the art. The invention is not limited to these features of any given implementation.</p><p>Real-time, packet-enabled stacks 425 , 430 ( 1-3 ) are used to exchange voice data over communication links 417 ( 1-3 ), 418 . In one embodiment, real-time, packet-enabled stacks 425, 430 (1-3) process voice packet data according to Voice Internet Protocol (VoIP). However, the present invention is not limited to VoIP, and in alternative embodiments, any desired protocol can be used in real-time, packet-enabled stacks 425, 430 (1-3) for processing voice packet data. can be implemented.</p><p>By processing voice packet data using real-time, packet-enabled stacks 425 , 430 ( 1-3 ), the master 405 and the slaves 410 ( 1-3 ), the master 405 Desirable quality guarantees and/or delay guarantees may be provided when transmitting voice packet data between the and one or more slaves 410 ( 1 - 3 ), or between the master 405 and the second network 420 . Moreover, voice packets processed by master 405 and slaves 410 ( 1-3 ) may be processed with a higher priority than data packets that are not time-sensitive.</p><p>In one embodiment, the piconet 415 may be used to extend or augment existing telephony networks, such as the second network 420 . Expanding or increasing the second network 420 using the piconet 415 may be substantially less expensive than directly expanding or increasing the second network 420 . For example, it can be quite expensive to expand or increase a cellular telephone network in an office building by installing ancillary cellular telephone towers dedicated to the office building. A piconet 415 with real-time, packet-enabled specifications 425 and 430 (1-3) may be much less expensive to install.</p><p>5 conceptually illustrates a Bluetooth stack 500 including a real-time, packet-enabled stack 505 . As described above, the Bluetooth stack 500 includes a WAE block 508 , a TCS Bin block 510 , an audio block 515 , a WAP block 520 , a user datagram protocol (UDP) block 522 , and transmit control. Protocol (TCP) Block 524 , Internet Protocol (IP) Block 526 , Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) Block 528 , Radio Frequency Communication Protocol (RFCOMM) Block 530 , Logical Link Control and Adaptation Protocol (L2CAP) block 532 , host controller interface 534 , asynchronous access controller 536 , baseband block 538 , link management protocol block 540 , and sending symbols over the communication link at the air interface. may include a Bluetooth radio 542 for</p><p>When the Bluetooth stack 500 is used in transmitter mode, the audio block 515 receives and processes one or more voice packets. Those skilled in the art will appreciate that processing one or more voice packets may include adding or removing headers, routing one or more voice packets, concatenating two or more voice packets, separating voice packets, or otherwise converting voice packets into one or more voice packets. It may include modifying actions. The audio block 515 then provides one or more voice packets to the real-time, packet-enabled stack 505 . In the disclosed embodiment, the real-time, packet-enabled stack 505 includes a Real-Time Transport (RTP) protocol block 546, a User Datagram Protocol (UDP) block 548, and an Internet Protocol (IP) block 550 , and a point-to-point protocol (PPP) block 552 .</p><p>However, the present invention is not limited to a particular set of protocols, and in alternative embodiments, the real-time, packet-enabled stack 505 facilitates real-time processing of voice packets using any desired combination of protocol layers. can be implemented Moreover, in one alternative embodiment, the real-time, packet-enabled stack 505 bifurcates such that a first branch is responsible for native speech processing and a second branch is reserved for bandwidth partitioning. can be For example, multiplexed time-sensitive Internet protocol data flows may be handled by a branched real-time, packet-enabled stack 505 .</p><p>A real-time, packet-enabled stack 505 provides the processed voice packets to a synchronous controller 555 . The synchronous controller 555 attempts to maintain a predefined quality and defer limits on voice packets. Voice packets received by the synchronous controller 555 are given a higher priority than packets received by the asynchronous controller 536 . Moreover, voice packets processed by real-time, packet-enabled stack 505 and synchronous controller 555 will not collide and/or compete with packets from other applications 560 . Synchronous controller 555 and baseband block 538 then provide a signal based on one or more voice packets to Bluetooth radio 542 for transmission over the air interface.</p><p>When the Bluetooth stack 500 is used in receive mode, the Bluetooth radio 542 receives one or more voice packets over the air interface and provides the one or more received voice packets to the synchronous controller 555 in baseband 538 . . As described above, the synchronous controller 555 may prioritize received voice packets and also provide quality guarantees and/or delay guarantees for the received voice packets. The synchronous controller 555 processes the received voice packets and provides them to the real-time, packet-enabled stack 505 , and also processes the received voice packets and then provides them to the audio block 515 . One or more signals from the audio block 515 may then be provided to a relay (not shown) for transmission to an external network, such as the second network 420 shown in FIG. 4 .</p><p>Voice packets have a natural identifiable mapping to the interfacing systems described above since they contain a Synchronization Control Object (SCO) handle. Thus, due to at least a portion of the identifiable SCO handle, ancillary extensions can be made to the voice service by associating the ancillary control protocols to the SCO handle. Ancillary protocol extensions may be combined with ancillary VoIP signaling protocols such as SIP, for example, with the controlled field exposed in the TCS Bin block 510 via appropriate protocol extensions. Moreover, mobility can also be extended in a similar manner, including field extensions pointing to mobile Internet protocol instead of standard cellular mobility.</p><p>6 conceptually illustrates an exemplary embodiment of a cordless phone profile block 600 . Those skilled in the art should appreciate that only those elements of the cordless phone profile 600 relevant to the present invention are described herein. For clarity, the operation of cordless phone profile 600 is described for devices operating in transmit mode. However, those skilled in the art should appreciate that the cordless phone profile 600 may also operate in a receive mode as described above.</p><p>In operation, the telephony application 605 forms and/or provides one or more voice packets and other control signals to the TCS bin block 610 and the speech synchronization controller 615 . For example, the telephony application 605 may be an Internet telephony application that provides at least one packet conforming to VoIP. A call control (CC) block 620 in the TCS bin block 610 manages the voice channel via an interface 625 with a speech synchronization controller 615 . Call control (CC) block 620 also manages the voice channel via interface 630 with Link Manager Protocol (LMP) block 635 . For example, call control block 620 may couple and/or disconnect internal speech paths by providing signals to speech synchronization controller 615 via interface 625 . Call control block 620 may also establish and/or release voice synchronization control links by providing signals to link manager protocol block 635 via interface 630 . </p><p>Interfaces 625 and 630 allow speech synchronization controller 615 to directly control the voice path from telephony application 605 at baseband 645 to real-time, packet-enabled stack 637 and synchronous controller 640 . can do it Thus, the telephony application 605 obtains guaranteed quality and/or guaranteed delay for voice packets transmitted by the cordless telephony stack 600 . Voice packets provided by the telephony application 605 may also be treated with a higher priority than other time-sensitive data packets. Accordingly, this technique allows voice packets from the telephony application 605 to be processed in the same manner as data traffic streams, as data packets processed by the asynchronous controller 650 at baseband 645 . As a result, the codeless phone profile 600 including the real-time, packet-enabled stack 637 may be particularly well suited for application to future 4G systems.</p><p>The specific embodiments described above are by way of example only, and although the invention may be otherwise modified and practiced, equivalent manners having the benefit of the teachings herein will be apparent to those skilled in the art. Moreover, there are no intended limitations to the details of construction or design shown herein other than as set forth in the claims below. Accordingly, it is evident that the specific embodiments described above may be altered or modified and all such variations are considered within the scope and spirit of the present invention. Accordingly, the scope of protection sought herein is as set forth in the claims below.</p>

<p>The present invention provides a method for transmitting a time-sensitive packet over a network in which a plurality of devices belonging to a prescribed set communicate with each other.</p>