Echo Management in VoIP Conferencing via Master Node Multiplexing
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing VoIP conferencing systems face challenges in managing echo cancellation, requiring complex echo cancellation functionality at every participant node, which increases CPU bandwidth requirements and development time.
Innovation Solution
The system employs a master node that mixes and multiplexes digital voice streams, allowing participant nodes to receive mixed or multiplexed streams without their own voice stream, enabling echo cancellation only at the master node and reducing the need for echo cancellation at participant nodes.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If echo cancellation functionality is implemented at every participant node, then echo cancellation effectiveness is improved, but device complexity and CPU bandwidth requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the echo cancellation functionality from individual participant nodes and concentrates it at the master node. The master node receives voice streams from all participants, performs echo cancellation centrally, and returns the processed streams to participants. This eliminates the need for complex echo cancellation implementations at each participant node while maintaining overall echo cancellation effectiveness.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent merges the echo cancellation function into a centralized master node that handles all echo cancellation operations for the entire conference. Instead of distributed echo cancellation at multiple nodes, the function is combined into a single centralized processing point, reducing overall system complexity while maintaining effectiveness.
2Reliability
If echo cancellation functionality is implemented at every participant node, then echo cancellation effectiveness is improved, but development time increases
Solution Approach 1:
By extracting echo cancellation from individual participant nodes and implementing it centrally at the master node, the patent reduces development time. Developers only need to implement echo cancellation once at the master node rather than at every participant node, significantly reducing overall development effort while maintaining effectiveness.
3Reliability
If participant nodes perform echo cancellation on received streams, then echo cancellation effectiveness is improved, but CPU bandwidth requirements at participant nodes increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the computationally intensive echo cancellation operations from participant nodes and relocates them to the master node. This reduces CPU bandwidth requirements at participant nodes since they only need to handle simple voice stream transmission and reception, while the master node with presumably greater computational resources handles the demanding echo cancellation processing.
Data Source
AI summary
A system includes participant nodes that unicast a voice stream to a master node and receive a multicast voice stream from the master node. The multicast voice stream may be a mixed voice stream mixing the voice streams of the participants. In this case, each participant performs echo cancellation on the multicast voice stream. Alternatively, the multicast voice stream may be a multiplexed voice stream multiplexing the voice streams of all participants. In this case, each participant de-multiplexes the multicast voice stream and generates a mixed voice stream that does not include that participant. Alternatively, the multicast voice stream received by each participant may be a multiplexed digital voice stream multiplexing multiple mixed streams including one mixed stream that does not include the voice stream of that participant. In this case, each participant de-multiplexes the multicast voice stream to obtain the mixed stream that does not include that participant.