Patent Grant
7865178
The invention relates to a group communication method, system, a device, and computer-readable storage medium carrying one or more sequences of one or more instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, cause an apparatus to perform at least one of the method for forming of a group of terminal devices, a method for listening a message between members of an established group, and a method for sending a message between members of an established group.
Advances in telecommunications systems technology have resulted in a variety of systems and services being available for system users. These systems include cellular telephone systems providing mobile telephone services. The cellular telephone systems provide services that allow subscribers to these systems to increase their accessibility and be reachable, potentially at all times, and as long as the subscribers remain in the service areas covered by their systems.
In a cellular system, a person desiring to contact the cellular subscriber would simply dial the phone number of the cellular subscriber to contact the subscriber at the subscriber's cellular telephone. As long as the cellular subscriber kept the cellular telephone powered on the subscriber would be accessible when located within the coverage area of the cellular system.
Normally the system sets up a call between the cellular telephone or a so-called mobile terminal and another mobile terminal or a subscriber of a public switched telephone network PSTN. Dialing the subscriber number of the mobile terminal or the like sets up a call to the given mobile terminal. In group calls the whole group is called with a single dialed number, i.e. a group number. A group call is a conference call in which all participants may talk in turn and hear one another. An individual mobile radio may belong to a plurality of groups programmed into the mobile radio. The system keeps a file on the base stations associated with the group number of each group. A group call may cover one, several or all base stations within the area of a mobile exchange or a plurality of mobile exchanges.
Some mobile networks include short message services, e.g. SMS is a bi-directional service in GSM for short alphanumeric messages or data in similar form. In SMS it is possible to deliver a message to the mobile terminal even during an established call, or to deliver a message using so-called store-and-forward service, in which the message is stored in the network, if the mobile terminal is unavailable, and forwarded shortly after the mobile terminal can be reached again. In the traditional GSM system data services are based on circuit switched technology providing maximum data transfer rate of 9,6 kbit/s for transparent and non-transparent bearer services for data communication. Along with an increasing data volume, demand for higher transfer rates has arisen so that the GSM has been developed to include as an extension the so-called General Packet Radio service (GPRS) as a packet switched data service.
Current solutions use names (e-mail) or telephone numbers (phones) to identify receivers which the user or an administrator must input to the system.
One drawback of using a cellular system to remain accessible over time is that cellular airtime charges may be expensive, even for calls made from a second party to the cellular telephone. Especially in a family with many mobile phones the costs will raise quite high. Also the calls between the young people will go high, as they usually want to keep contact quite often and continuously with friends. This same applies to the people who wish to communicate with the people who are close regarding work, hobbies and school and want only to communicate with certain team members. Also the need for a simple communication with simple terminals exists in order to establish communication between group members. Also to define a group, i.e. to define which members can communicate with each other has been quite difficult especially after one has bought his/her phone. Especially for children there is a real need for cheap terminals in order to avoid harm after the terminal is possibly lost or it has been broken due to the fall of the phone. There is also a great need for communication between people, in a way not to overload the network, and, however, so that the subscribers can be reached easily and reliably. Further the younger people who are members of teams or other groups want to have a common communication terminal and communication way for their group.
The present invention introduces a new method and terminal, preferably a wireless communication terminal, for sending voice messages to a group of terminals as one single transmission from the sending terminal. Preferably a cellular telephone network is used for the wireless communication. Also the present invention provides a method for creating a group of terminals by coupling together providing a number of mobile terminals and initiating a group creation command to pass each of the coupled terminals in order to form a group information. The coupling may be a wireless or physical coupling, and the group information is preferably sent to a server connected to the network which stores and updates the group information and after group establishment passes messages to the terminals of the group.
According to a preferred embodiment of the terminal according to the invention accessibility is aimed at by a simple user interface design, an approachable simple appearance, a wearable lightweight, small and robust body. The method is a voice messaging delivery system that enables service providers to offer portable two-way communication services over cellular networks. It is possible to use the mobile phone also as to group mode by selecting a predetermined key for the communication within the group. One-key selection makes it easy to contact the other group members. The invention makes possible communication between terminals, which have a non-conventional keypad, or between the terminals which have keypad or display and the terminals, which have neither display nor keypad for number dialing. The terminal does not need to know the actual members of a particular group. As result the terminal can be designed to be easy to use and cheap to produce. It is usable for remote working teams (e.g. field engineering, fishing, agriculture), and e.g. for elderly people's security.
Further the invention is assumed to be suitable especially for young children who have a relatively limited number of reference groups.
According to a first aspect of the invention there is provided a method for voice based communication between a number of mobile terminals of a telecommunication network, said method comprising the steps of, creating a group of said number of terminals and storing group information in each of said number of terminals, recording a voice message in one of said terminals of said group, dispatching the voice message to said terminals of said group from said one of said terminals, and receiving the voice message at least all other terminals of said group.
According to a second aspect of the invention there is provided a method for establishing a group of mobile terminals said method comprising the steps of: coupling together a number of mobile terminals, initiating a group creation command from at least one of said terminals, sending predetermined information from terminal to terminal to each terminal of said number of terminals for forming a group information, transmitting the group information to all of said terminals thus forming a group of said terminals.
According to a third aspect of the invention there is provided a method for sending a message from a mobile terminal to a group of mobile terminals of a telecommunication network, said method comprising the steps of selecting at the mobile terminal the group of a number of predetermined groups, allowing the user of the mobile terminal to speak a message, transmitting the recorded message to a server, storing at the server information on the terminals of the group of terminals, and further transmitting the message to each terminal of said group of terminals from the server based on said information.
According to a fourth aspect of the invention there is provided a method for receiving a message at a mobile terminal of a telecommunication, said method comprising the steps of receiving a voice message comprising a recorded message, indicating to the user of the terminal that a message has been received, further indicating to the user of the terminal that the received message is from a terminal belonging to a certain group of a number of predetermined groups, allowing the user to give an input to the terminal, and upon receiving said input playing back the received recorded voice message at the terminal.
According to a fifth aspect of the invention there is provided a wireless voice communication terminal for a radio communication network, said terminal comprising a recorder for recording a voice message, means for storing a terminal communication group definition defining a number of terminals belonging to the same communication group, and means for sending said recorded voice message to said number of terminals of said communication group as single transmission from the wireless voice communication terminal.
The
The table can further include instead of mobile number the address of the terminal consisting of the IP (Internet protocol) address or MSISDN number combined with the information of the name of the group and/or the names of the group members. The table may be located also in a communication server in the IP network in a service server as in
Referring now to
For one communication group there is only one button or key if the terminal is constructed by hardware as is shown in
Further
One group member can be a member of many different groups. The mobile phone will have many group ids. Therefore in order to control the memberships of one mobile terminal or the user in the service, a database in the communication server for the single user can be created. It is, however, limited usually to the 5 to 10 groups per member in order to keep the system simple. However, the database of the communication server can also collect information of the memberships of the users. Then all information regarding the user number may be collected to the communication server. A further possibility is that the communication server will have e.g. a column information about each messaging terminal's key 116 in connection with the user in
The creation of the groups will be presented in the following. Two different kinds of groups can be made: between simple voice messaging terminals a group can be established. One or several voice messaging terminals or conventional mobile phones can establish a group. One can buy one, two (or several) terminals or permissions to provide a group from a supermarket or kiosk, form a group or the group is already created beforehand for those terminals and start using the terminals in group communication immediately. The terminal price may include a defined amount of prepaid communication capacity or it can be paid afterwards in the subscriber invoice. If one of the group members is already a subscriber of the telecommunications network, he can be billed using this voice messaging service as he has used his telephone. This bill can include all the group messaging services used especially when a family group is concerned. If the voice messaging terminals for group members have been bought and a prepaid amount of usage time is used, then the user can buy more time in order to further use the voice messaging terminal. One needs to make a contract with the operator not until the prepaid capacity is used.
In following the actual physical creation of a group will be explained. In a preferred embodiment creating a group is done by actually getting all terminals (which are to become members of the group) together in one single location and then upon joint decision starting the necessary actions for creating a messaging group maintaining the group feeling even when scattered around. When a group of terminals is within, say, one room, the inter-terminal communication needed for grouping can be arranged based on: short distance wireless (e.g. infrared or radio) or physical contact (galvanic contacts) or contactless based on inductive, capacitive or optical coupling.
In
As physical presence within the new group creates a feeling of unity among common users, this feeling can be enhanced further by actually uniting the group of terminals, too. Physical contact can also be used to eliminate a group of user interface functions from the user thus making the grouping process straightforward and robust. Since communication between individual terminals can be arranged at much lower cost from both hardware and software point of view the option of physical contact can be preferred over the short distance wireless alternatives. The main drawback of physical contact based grouping is the difficulty of handling large groups, i.e. a stack of terminals may get difficult to handle without any support like a table. It will be understood that other solutions like physical contact, magnetic or other optical transmissions, contactless transmissions like radio, (e.g. Bluetooth terminal) which can be done e.g. within 10 m radius. Also voice recognition based solutions are possible like using system as in Nokia's patent publication EP0959401 relating to voice browsing. The functions like forming a group, sending a message or listening to a message can be prerecorded and recognized by the terminal when these commands are uttered.
Upon detecting the group forming state a terminal microcontroller (CPU) starts transmitting idle characters, i.e. “please standby” messages to the next terminal in line. This effectively creates a bi-directional data path (chain of sensors in one direction and idle data in the other) ensuring that the array remains intact during the grouping process. The first terminal in line requests its user to input the group selection. Once the selection has been given the terminal changes its local communication channel transmitter to send identity data rather at regular intervals.
An alternative way to form a group and when a communication link like Bluetooth is used as a local data transmission channel, the master of the group forming is selected amongst the terminals (when forming the group). When the voice messaging terminals are in the group forming mode e.g. a Bluetooth connection is selected from the menu of the display of the terminals who want to form the group and who are within the area of that radio. After a few seconds the master terminal (having a display) shows the names of the terminals that are to be connected in a list. The intention is that someone of the users checks if the list is correct. At the bottom of the list there are two rows (alternatives): cancel and accept (An example of the display shown in
A master terminal can be either voted by the terminals using an algorithm that is similar what is used in token buss type networks. Or the master can be selected by the location of the terminals. In this case e.g. the rightmost terminal (in
Although not shown the data frames need to be equipped with parity or CRC (Cydic Redundancy Check) data in order to unwanted group members resulting in data transfer errors.
After receiving all group forming related data from the new group members terminal n prompts this with special sound, light or other user interface design enabled method. This is an indication to all users that the process is complete and the array may be broken. From this on terminal n alone continues the grouping process with communication to the communication server.
Group information may comprise a string of characters or binary data bytes containing the terminal identifier (typically serial number) and the local group identifier (typically one number or byte of data) of each group member, e.g. as shown in
Grouping can even be fully automatic procedure if terminal's can only do one group at a time. The situation is more complex, however, in most practical cases where the user is given the option of communicating voice messages with more than one group.
When a group of terminals are stacked in an array for group forming all associated users are expected to manually select the preferred group option in their individual terminals. In practice this can be handled by e.g. tapping a group button according to guidance given with indicators (typically LED's or text/graphic on a display). Voice control can also be used, if all terminals' are capable of identifying their owners.
A terminal can detect presence of other similar terminals either through contact sensitive switches, galvanic contact, bi-directional communication channel polling or contactless sensing.
An example of terminal local communication channel arrangement is presented where a communication channel as data transmission channel may be formed between the terminals e.g. in the situation shown in
Alternatives listed above have very different cost/performance/reliability implications. The galvanic contact is definitely the cheapest to implement, yet it is sensitive to dirt and water and ESD problems may eventually turn the cost performance upside down. Capacitive coupling is not very practical at low data rates required in terminal. Inductive coupling would be ideal for data rates used in the terminal, but unfortunately the number of components required for a reliable interface is beyond practical limits in a consumer electronics device. At short distances (<1 cm) optical interface (
Making a group with no one can erase all connections related to a button, i.e. in group forming mode the user presses the button for e.g. 3 s without another terminal with which to communicate. In info mode one can listen the status of the groups. Status may be checked in like the other messages in communication modes, i.e. by short button presses. Status information includes IDs of group members, number of new messages, time of last new message and so on. In addition this mode enables the user to delete all new messages without listening, reset the button. Prompts such as follows are given “Press the group button to delete all messages in this group” and “Press the group button to leave the group”.
The group-forming mode is exited, when the terminals are separated form each other.
The SMS including information about group and group member information may be sent from the terminal, which has the information of the other members of the new group, to the communication server. When establishing a connection between the voice messaging terminals the SMS message may be sent so that it automatically initiates transmission of a message through SMS, by establishing automatically a connection to the SMSC (SMSC=Short Message Service Center) and inputting information to SMS that initiates transmission of a message to messaging terminals through the SMS. The information sent in the messages may be as presented in
A mobile originated short message transmission and a mobile terminated short message transmission are defined as different services. Short messages are transmitted from a mobile terminal to the short message center SMSC. These short messages may be directed to other mobile users or to subscribers of a fixed network. Short messages are transmitted from the short message center SMSC to terminals. These short messages may have entered the short message center SMSC from other mobile users or from other sources. The protocol used between the SMSC and the terminals is called SMTP (Short Message Transport Protocol). The short message center SMSC is given an ISDN number of its own in the numbering domain of the GSM network, and using this number the mobile terminal can direct a short message to the SMSC. Further in order to reach the said voice communication server, said number may be specific to the communication server or certain numbers of terminals may be directed to the voice messaging server services.
The short message service center SMSC is connected to the voice communication server so that it is possible to send messages to the voice communication server. The connection between the short message center SMSC and the communication server may be similar to that in the existing short message service centers.
The transmission and reception of short messages via the GSM connection are controlled by the SMSC which is connected to the communication server in the case SMS messages are preferred. The functionality of the SMSC is to convert a short message received via the GSM connection into the communication server. The communication server controls and fetches the members of the group by the identifier. The destination addresses are found from the list of the communication server as shown in
The short message is transmitted to the short message center SMSC as a normal mobile originated message. It includes the numbers for identifying the group members as presented in 300 in
The communication server can be connected to the mobile communication network via standardized interfaces (telecommunications and signaling connections).
The voice messages between terminals of the same group is described in the following. The terminal records a voice message and sends it to the server. The message is listened when it is convenient for the receiver.
In the following
If pressed again while listening to a message, the rest of the message is skipped and the next message will be played. One previously listened message can be repeated. This feature is for being able to e.g. write down numbers or addresses. The message may be listened repeatedly. When the terminal is idle, the key is double pressed. The previously listened message is played. After listening end signal is heard.
The rate of LED blinking may indicate the number of new messages. The faster the rate, the more there are messages. The usage of the terminal may be such that when pressing once the key it is possible listen to a new or interrupt message, double pressing causes it possible to listen to a previous message or from start of a message. By holding the key pressed longer it is possible to record a message.
When somebody leaves the group a system message like “remove” message is sent. The server is contacted by the terminal and the register will be updated regarding that group. The group may be deleted automatically in the server, if there is less than 2 members. The last members are informed about this by a system message.
The server uses the group member information in delivering all messages to appropriate receivers.
A single communication server may be used with very different user groups (fin vs. work, children vs. elderly etc.) and, similarly terminals targeted for different customer segments may have very different industrial designs and user interface concepts. In order to manage this sort of versatility the group forming procedures, associated user interfaces and communication protocols need to be kept extremely simple.
Despite using dedicated keys for every group it is possible to provide a solution as described below. This is preferred when the data transmission channel is radio, e.g. Bluetooth. Here is an example of an implementation of message sending using the aid of menus on the display of the voice messaging terminal.
Main menu:
When “Send message” is selected in the list and the user presses a select button, recording starts and record menu appears:
When recording is done a list of recipient groups appears.
Pressing the select button now causes the terminal to send the recorded and compressed voice message to the selected group which in this is identified by the name of Scouts.
When a message arrives, an alert tone is given and the main menu option “Listen message” is activated. Pressing select button now starts the listening of the received message.
As such, and although the method and apparatus of the present invention has been illustrated and described with regard to presently preferred embodiments thereof, it will be understood that numerous modifications and substitutions may be made to the embodiments described, and that numerous other embodiments of the invention may be implemented, without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention as defined in the following claims. E.g. the stickers can be added to the keys to inform the group identity. The cover of terminal can be changed.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 982490 | Nov 1998 | FI | national |
This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/853,214, filed on May 26, 2004, which in turn is a continuation of U.S. Pat. No. 6,757,531, issued on Jun. 29, 2004, each of which are incorporated by reference in their entirety herein.
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