Network system for reliable reception of wireless audio
AssigneeSound Devices LLC
InventorMatt Anderson
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Methods and devices are provided for a wireless microphone network whereby robustness for reception of audio information transmitted by one or more wireless microphones is enhanced. The system incorporates a dual stage network approach for collecting, transmitting and receiving audio information. In the first stage, audio information collected by one or more microphone modules is transmitted to a series of receiver base stations. In the second stage, information received at each base station is subsequently transmitted to a receiver hub that selects or augments the information to produce a high quality representation of audio information, which provides improved robustness and reliability with respect to the movement or physical placement of each microphone module.
Claims16
A method of connecting a wireless microphone to one ore more endpoints comprising the steps of:
- providing at least one microphone module with a transmitting antenna;
- providing an array of receiving base stations, wherein each base station has a receiving antenna, is configured to decode received audio data into audio over Ethernet data packets and to collect quality of signal information about the audio data in the respective audio over Ethernet data packets, is configured to augment the audio over Ethernet packets with said quality of signal information, and is further configured to transmit the augmented audio over Ethernet data packets through an Ethernet connection;
- providing a receiver hub configured to receive the audio over Ethernet data packets from all of the receiving base stations through an Ethernet connection;
- connecting the receiving base stations to the receiving hub using the Ethernet connections to form a second network stage;
- detecting a physical audio waveform with the microphone module;
- wirelessly transmitting audio data describing the audio waveform through the transmitting antenna of the at least one microphone over a first network stage to each receiving base station in the array within range;
- continuously receiving the wirelessly transmitted audio data in at least two of the receiving base stations within range of the transmitting antenna;
- in the at least two of the receiving base stations, decoding the received audio data into audio over Ethernet data packets, collecting quality of signal information about the audio data and augmenting the respective audio over Ethernet data packets with said quality of signal information;
- transmitting the augmented audio over Ethernet data packets from the at least two receiving base stations over the second stage of the network to be collected in the receiver hub;
- reconstructing an output audio waveform in the receiver hub based on combining collected audio data in the augmented audio over Ethernet data packets and the corresponding quality of signal information received from the at least two receiving base stations;
- and
- sending or broadcasting the output audio waveform from the receiver hub to one ore more endpoints.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.