Patent Application
20060253770
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to communication systems, and, more particularly, to wireless communication systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
Wireless communication systems, such as cellular telephone networks, generally include one or more mobile units that may establish wireless communication links with at least one base station that is communicatively coupled to the wireless communication system. Exemplary mobile units include, but are not limited to, mobile phones, personal data assistants (PDA), smart phones, laptop computers, and text messaging devices. The wireless communication systems provide a variety of services related to voice and/or data communication. For example, conventional wireless communication systems may provide a push-to-talk service to subscribers.
Push-to-talk is a relatively new mobile application that can be deployed in cellular networks. Push-to-talk is a walkie-talkie type of dispatch service that a user may initiate by pressing a dedicated button on a mobile unit such as a regular mobile phone or a PDA type of device. When the dedicated button is pressed, the mobile unit initiates a half-duplex communication link to one or more selected mobile units. For example, when the push-to-talk service is activated, a buddy list may be shown on a screen on the mobile unit. The user may select one or more users from the list and then press the dedicated button. After the user hears a beep, he starts to talk. When the user releases the dedicated button, one other user may speak by pressing a dedicated button on their mobile unit. For example, the speaking user may release the dedicated button and wait for the called person(s) to answer. After the conversation, the user may press an end button or simply hang up to end the call.
Push-to-talk services may be relatively inexpensive and provide a convenient way to speak to a selected group of users in the wireless indication network. Thus, push-to-talk services are frequently used by users that may have a need to speak immediately to one or more predetermined users. For example, push-to-talk is often used by police officers, taxi drivers, truck drivers and IT managers. However, push-to-talk services also have a number of disadvantages. For example, only one user may talk at a time because the push-to-talk service operates in half duplex mode. Moreover, the user may only talk while the dedicated button is pressed.
The present invention is directed to addressing the effects of one or more of the problems set forth above. The following presents a simplified summary of the invention in order to provide a basic understanding of some aspects of the invention. This summary is not an exhaustive overview of the invention. It is not intended to identify key or critical elements of the invention or to delineate the scope of the invention. Its sole purpose is to present some concepts in a simplified form as a prelude to the more detailed description that is discussed later.
In one embodiment of the instant invention, a method of wireless communication using a mobile unit is provided. The method includes establishing a wireless communication link in response to an indication provided using a graphical user interface associated with the mobile unit.
In another embodiment of the present invention, a method is provided for wireless communication with a mobile unit. The method includes receiving an indication of a wireless communication link provided using a graphical user interface associated with the mobile unit and forming the wireless communication link in response to receiving the indication.
The invention may be understood by reference to the following description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which like reference numerals identify like elements, and in which:
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 are herein described in detail. It should be understood, however, that the description herein of specific embodiments is not intended to limit the invention to the particular forms disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope of the invention as defined by the appended claims.
Illustrative embodiments of the invention are described below. In the interest of clarity, not all features of an actual implementation are described in this specification. It will of course be appreciated that in the development of any such actual embodiment, numerous implementation-specific decisions should be made to achieve the developers' specific goals, such as compliance with system-related and business-related constraints, which will vary from one implementation to another. Moreover, it will be appreciated that such a development effort might be complex and time-consuming, but would nevertheless be a routine undertaking for those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of this disclosure.
Portions of the present invention and corresponding detailed description are presented in terms of software, or algorithms and symbolic representations of operations on data bits within a computer memory. These descriptions and representations are the ones by which those of ordinary skill in the art effectively convey the substance of their work to others of ordinary skill in the art. An algorithm, as the term is used here, and as it is used generally, is conceived to be a self-consistent sequence of steps leading to a desired result. The steps are those requiring physical manipulations of physical quantities. Usually, though not necessarily, these quantities take the form of optical, electrical, or magnetic signals capable of being stored, transferred, combined, compared, and otherwise manipulated. It has proven convenient at times, principally for reasons of common usage, to refer to these signals as bits, values, elements, symbols, characters, terms, numbers, or the like.
It should be borne in mind, however, that all of these and similar terms are to be associated with the appropriate physical quantities and are merely convenient labels applied to these quantities. Unless specifically stated otherwise, or as is apparent from the discussion, terms such as “processing” or “computing” or “calculating” or “determining” or “displaying” or the like, refer to the action and processes of a computer system, or similar electronic computing device, that manipulates and transforms data represented as physical, electronic quantities within the computer system's registers and memories into other data similarly represented as physical quantities within the computer system memories or registers or other such information storage, transmission or display devices.
Note also that the software implemented aspects of the invention are typically encoded on some form of program storage medium or implemented over some type of transmission medium. The program storage medium may be magnetic (e.g., a floppy disk or a hard drive) or optical (e.g., a compact disk read only memory, or “CD ROM”), and may be read only or random access. Similarly, the transmission medium may be twisted wire pairs, coaxial cable, optical fiber, or some other suitable transmission medium known to the art. The invention is not limited by these aspects of any given implementation.
The present invention will now be described with reference to the attached figures. Various structures, systems and devices are schematically depicted in the drawings for purposes of explanation only and so as to not obscure the present invention with details that are well known to those skilled in the art. Nevertheless, the attached drawings are included to describe and explain illustrative examples of the present invention. The words and phrases used herein should be understood and interpreted to have a meaning consistent with the understanding of those words and phrases by those skilled in the relevant art. No special definition of a term or phrase, i.e., a definition that is different from the ordinary and customary meaning as understood by those skilled in the art, is intended to be implied by consistent usage of the term or phrase herein. To the extent that a term or phrase is intended to have a special meaning, i.e., a meaning other than that understood by skilled artisans, such a special definition will be expressly set forth in the specification in a definitional manner that directly and unequivocally provides the special definition for the term or phrase.
Referring now to
The communication system 100 includes mobile devices 115(1-2). Exemplary mobile devices 115(1-2) include, but are not limited to, mobile phones, personal data assistants, smart phones, laptops, and text messaging devices. In the interest of clarity, only two mobile devices 115(1-2) are shown in
In the illustrated embodiment, the wireless network 105 includes a mobile switching center (MSC) 123, which may be used to provide switching services to the wireless network 105. The wireless network 105 may be coupled to a packet data network 125 by a packet data switch node 130. The packet data network 125 may include an authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) module 135, a domain name server (DNS) 140, a soft switch 145, a messaging server 150, and a conference bridge 155. The packet data network 125 may also be communicatively coupled to a public Internet 160 via a firewall 165. Implementation and/or operation of the mobile switching center 123, the packet data network 125, the packet data switch node 130, the AAA module 135, the domain name server 140, the soft switch 145, the messaging server 150, the conference bridge 155, the public Internet 160, and the firewall 165 are known to persons of ordinary skill in the art and not material to the present invention. Thus, implementation and/or operation of these devices will not be discussed further herein.
The mobile devices 115(1-2) shown in
The services that may be performed by the mobile device 200 may include, but are not limited to, a walkie-talkie dispatch service (indicated by the box 220 in the graphical user interface 205), a regular phone call (indicated by the box 225 in the graphical user interface 205), a conference call (indicated by the box 230), a voice messaging service (indicated by the box 235), and a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service (indicated by the box 240). The mobile device 200 may also provide additional functionality such as a pal list (indicated by the box 245) a phone book (indicated by the box 250), a group list (indicated by the box 255), a voice to text conversion program (indicated by the box 260), and a phone/IP address book (indicated by the box 265). Persons of ordinary skill in the art having benefit of the present disclosure should appreciate that this list of services and/or functions is intended to be exemplary and is not an exhaustive list of the possible services and/or functions that may be performed by the mobile device 200.
In operation, a user may select one or more functions using the graphical user interface 205. In the embodiment illustrated in
The user may also initiate one or more wireless communication services using the graphical user interface 205. In the embodiment illustrated in
In one embodiment, the wireless communications services are provided in accordance with the selected functionality. For example, the wireless communication link may be formed using selected pals, numbers from a phone book, groups and the like. For another example, information provided over the wireless communication link may include text formed by the voice-to-text conversion function. The text may be used to leave a message in a voice messaging system or on a user's terminal device. Alternatively, a user may provide an indication of the desired wireless communication link. For example, the user may type in a phone number or an Internet address that may be used to establish the wireless communication link.
Although
In operation, a graphical user interface is displayed on a screen of the mobile device 300, as indicated in box 330. The information displayed on the screen may include one or more pull-down menus to provide additional selections. A point action may be detected by the graphical user interface, as indicated in box 350. As discussed above, the point action may be performed using a mouse, a pen, a stylus, a finger, a clicking operation, a touching operation, and the like. The point action is used to initiate a wireless communication link and this may include performing address translation, address mapping, one-to-many address translation, and other operations, as indicated in box 335. When the user points to a link displayed by the graphical user interface and the point action has been detected by the graphical user interface, the mobile device 300 is in the off-hook state. When other people try to call the mobile device 300 while it is in the off-hook state, a busy signal will be sent over to the other party.
Information indicative of the pointing action, the address translation, and/or the address mapping may be provided to the controller 305, which may instruct the signal module 340 to set up the appropriate wireless communication link. The signal module 340 may then provide the appropriate signaling information to the transmission module 345 for transmission to a base station 355. In one embodiment, standard signaling protocols may be used to establish the point-to-talk wireless communication link. For example, either SIP (session initiated protocol) or MGCP (media gateway control protocol) can be used for setting up and/or tearing down a call.
The controller 305 may also receive voice information from the microphone 310 and provide audio information using the speaker 315. In one embodiment, the voice information provided by the microphone 310 may be provided to the voice/data processing module 320, which may provide information indicative of the voice information to the transmission module 345 for transmission over an air interface 360 to the base station 355. In some embodiments, the voice information may be converted to text information using the voice to text conversion module 325. The text information may then be provided to the transmission module 345 for transmission over the air interface 360 to the base station 355.
The particular embodiments disclosed above are illustrative only, as the invention may be modified and practiced in different but equivalent manners apparent to those skilled in the art having the benefit of the teachings herein. Furthermore, no limitations are intended to the details of construction or design herein shown, other than as described in the claims below. It is therefore evident that the particular embodiments disclosed above may be altered or modified and all such variations are considered within the scope and spirit of the invention. Accordingly, the protection sought herein is as set forth in the claims below.
