1. Field of the Invention
Telephone circuits and VOIP (voice over Internet protocol) ATAs (analog terminal adapters) as applied in analog telephone line circuits that interface through a 2 wire connection with a characteristic termination impedance within the voice band (200 Hz, 3400 Hz).
2. Prior Art
Throughout the global telephony administrations, three types of characteristic telephone line impedances ZL can be found. These are shown in the three cases of
Examples of actual values applicable to
In addition, the impedance at 12 kHz or 16 kHz is defined at certain administrations when Teletax (metering pulse) is in use. Generally, a fixed resistance of 200 Ohm is used in that case.
The impedance matching is measured by means of the 2 Wire Return Loss RL2W, which is a measure of the amount of reflection R on the telephone line. It can be calculated by:
where ZL is the telephone line impedance and ZS is the source impedance.
In the ideal case, the return loss is infinite, but when ZL and ZS are not exactly matched, reflection will occur and the return loss can be calculated. The return loss can be measured directly on a 2 Wire connection.
Another way to look at the return loss is through the trans hybrid return loss TBRL. This also includes the Hybrid Balance Gain A
At the ideal hybrid balance, the equation resolves into the same equation as the 2 Wire return Loss. The trans hybrid return loss can be measured at the switching side of the network.
Impedance matching circuits in POTS (plain old telephone system) telephone line circuits have been used since full duplex 2 wire connections were in place. The early solutions used expensive and bulky transformers with multi-taps. Later, more advanced solid-state solutions using amplifiers and external discretes were used. Examples of this arrangement can be found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,789,999, 4,631,359 and 5,402,485. These solutions were non-programmable and required replacement of matching components at the application level.
Existing solutions of an integrated programmable termination and source impedance for a telephone line interface circuit (SLIC) are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,925,171 and 6,735,302. In these inventions, the impedance matching circuit is implemented by a continuous time path in parallel with a complex digital filter. These digital filters require a DAC, an ADC, anti-aliasing and smoothing filters to operate. This will cause a time delay of the in-band signals. The delay will have a limitation on the maximum possible return loss or trans hybrid return loss. This can be explained by taking two cosine wave signals and subtracting them, which is generally done inside the hybrid balancing circuit shown in
The maximum achievable trans hybrid return loss for this example would be:
V1−V2=20·Log10(2·sin(ω·τ
ω=2·n·frequency
Examples of this are illustrated in
Another approach of solid state impedance matching is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,558,185. In this approach, a switched capacitor network is used for the impedance matching filter. This filter requires an anti-aliasing filter and smoothing filter in order to suppress clock noise on the telephone line. Also, there is no continuous time feedback path available. Therefore, this approach also has limited performance due to group delay.
a and 14b illustrate detailed implementations for the two switched capacitor configurations controlled by register C.
The present invention provides an accurate, integrated programmable termination and source impedance for a telephone line interface circuit (SLIC). The accurate matching of this programmable termination and source impedance with the termination impedance of the 2 Wire connection eliminates signal reflections on this connection and therefore removes the echo, which can lead to reduced signal quality in packetized VOIP systems.
The programmable integrated impedance matching circuits of this invention use a programmable time continuous amplifier in combination with a double sampling programmable switched capacitor feedback stage (sampling twice per clock cycle by sampling on the positive and negative phases of a non-overlapping clock cycle). The double sampling switched capacitor feedback stage is a sampling circuit and therefore will contribute delay. However, the delay is minimized due to the double sampling and the direct feedback to the continuous time amplifier stage. This arrangement does not require a delay compensation network. Use of a switched capacitor circuit to synthesize a resistance allows the realization of the relatively long time constants needed, generally, thereby allowing the realization of the present invention programmable impedance matching circuit as an integrated circuit without external discrete resistors or capacitors. In addition, the implemented time constants will be synthesized by ratios of integrated capacitors using the switched capacitor stages. This will strongly reduce the process sensitivity during manufacturing as compared to general RC stages. A block diagram of the circuit is shown in
An equivalent simplified single ended diagram is shown in
The impedance matching circuit in combination with the OTA and the AC sense feedback will then generate an output impedance of ZS at the output of the OTA when gM1 equals gM2. This output impedance Zs is then programmed to match the characteristic load impedance ZL. The output level will be:
In order to synthesize
we need to create the 1/x function of the characteristic telephone line impedance and multiply it with a constant gain factor 1/gm2.
The characteristic impedance is defined as:
Therefore the 1/x equivalent is:
Therefore H(s) needs to be:
This arrangement of the impedance matching circuit also allows easy integration of a Teletax (metering pulse) feature. The integration of this feature is shown in
A special TELETAX filter is used to separate the metering pulse signal from the voice signal on the customer provided equipment (CPE) side.
A simplified single ended diagram for the metering pulse section is shown in
Parasitic components at the telephone line terminals can affect the return loss characteristics. Such parasitics are shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,789,999. The arrangement of the impedance matching circuit in the present invention can easily be modified in order to add a compensation network for such parasitic components. This modification is shown in
A similar structure exists for the programmable resistors, as shown in
The clock is generated by a non-overlapping clock generator, which is supplied by an on-chip PLL. The PLL synchronizes the internal clock to an external reference clock as shown in
With the approximation
the transfer function H(s) then becomes:
This equation is similar to the earlier described requirement for H(s).
Case 1 (This realizes the plain resistive impedance of case 1 of
Case 2 (This realizes the resistive impedance with series capacitance of case 2 of
Case 3 (This realizes all three components R1, R2 & C of case 3 of
Teletax Case:
As shown before, the metering pulse can be passed through independent of the source impedance ZS, as long as A=(1/GmR1), where R1 the resistive load of the teletax meter. This is satisfied using:
R
R
The circuit of
The telephone line circuit often has parasitic components at the terminals due to wiring and surge protection circuitry. This affects the effective termination impedance and therefore the return loss. The circuit of the present invention can easily be configured to add a compensation network for this. An example is shown in
The transfer function of the compensation network (from Cp1 & Cp2) is derived:
Therefore, the new transfer function with parasitic capacitance compensation becomes:
Registers are provided to add compensation for various parasitic capacitances. The additional capacitor Cs is just added for smoothing purposes and does not affect the in-band signals.
The invention is not only useful for interfacing telephones to telephone lines, but for interfacing other equipment to telephone lines also, such as FAXes and modems. The invention is also useful in packet switched telephony applications, which use a ‘plain old telephone’ interface. Currently, one such an application is residential VOIP. In that application the invention would be used in a device called an ATA (analog terminal adapter). An ATA has an interface to the ‘plain old telephone’ and an Ethernet port to be hooked up to the Internet router. The use of this invention in the ATA for residential VOIP will result in a lower amplitude of the echo and therefore better overall signal quality for the end user. This is essential to residential VOIP OEM's, who are competing heavily with the traditional telephony service providers and trying to offer better quality at a lower price.
While certain preferred embodiments of the present invention have been disclosed and described herein for purposes of illustration and not for purposes of limitation, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that various changes in form and detail may be made therein without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention.
This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 60/779,622 filed Mar. 6, 2006.
Number | Name | Date | Kind |
---|---|---|---|
4558185 | Morikawa et al. | Dec 1985 | A |
4631359 | Johansson et al. | Dec 1986 | A |
4789999 | Meschkat et al. | Dec 1988 | A |
5187742 | Moran, III et al. | Feb 1993 | A |
5402485 | Takato et al. | Mar 1995 | A |
5473685 | Mulder | Dec 1995 | A |
5598467 | Bremner et al. | Jan 1997 | A |
6625278 | Hendricks et al. | Sep 2003 | B1 |
6735302 | Caine et al. | May 2004 | B1 |
6920471 | Chan et al. | Jul 2005 | B2 |
6925171 | Wang et al. | Aug 2005 | B2 |
6990191 | Anderson et al. | Jan 2006 | B2 |
7062037 | Chan et al. | Jun 2006 | B2 |
20030076945 | Huang et al. | Apr 2003 | A1 |
20030169871 | Enriquez et al. | Sep 2003 | A1 |
Number | Date | Country | |
---|---|---|---|
20070206775 A1 | Sep 2007 | US |
Number | Date | Country | |
---|---|---|---|
60779622 | Mar 2006 | US |