An enhanced radio telephone for use in internet telephony

Abstract

An enhanced radio telephone providing both wireless communication and Internet-protocol (IP) telephone communication. In addition to transmitting and receiving digitized and coded speech signals in a wireless fashion using a radio transceiver, the enhanced radio telephone can also exchange coded speech data with a computer which is coupled to a communication network. Thus, the enhanced radio telephone can selectively operate as either a conventional radio telephone or as an improved IP telephone. The enhanced radio telephone includes an internal speech coder which is implemented for low power consumption and which allows the enhanced radio telephone to be used with a relatively low-cost computer for effective and economic IP telephony. In exemplary embodiments, an enhanced radio handset is connected to an input / output port of a personal computer running a software telephony application. Coded and compressed digital speech signals are passed back and forth between the enhanced radio telephone and the computer, and the computer performs conversions between the coded speech signals and an appropriate network protocol. Because the computer does not perform speech coding and decoding internally, the computer functionality may be implemented, for example, using an inexpensive notebook or palm-top computer. Advantageously, a user may initate telephone calls from either the enhanced radio telephone or the telephony application running on the computer.

Description

Background of the invention [0001] The present invention relates to IP telephony, and more particularly to an improved end-user interface for IP telephony communications. [0002] Today, Internet telephony is a new challenge to traditional telephony, because the price of making long-distance calls through the global Internet is relatively low. In addition, although the quality of service provided by the current Internet telephony system is relatively poor, future improvements will undoubtedly provide signal quality not inferior to that of the conventional system. [0003] The existing IP telephone mainly includes a multimedia personal computer (PC), and the telephone program running in the computer converts the end user's voice signal into a digital signal in an appropriate format, and transmits it on a computer network (such as the global Internet), and vice versa. Of course. Such multimedia PCs usually include a sound card with a microphone and speakers for input and outpu...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

In addition, traditional IP telephony applications require additional sound processing devices, such as sound cards and microphones, which are often not included in standard consumer PC packages

[0005] Therefore, a traditional IP phone requires a high-end personal computer, which is expensive, consumes a lot of power, and is bulky compared to a traditional phone

In addition, the PC is usually in a shutdown state, which requires a relatively long startup time, which is very inconvenient

Also, even a well-equipped PC is usually not as comfortable as an end user's phone handset, and the PC's microphone and speakers are far away, creating echoes

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