Fixed cellular terminal with packet data transmission over analog interface

Abstract

A fixed cellular terminal (FCT) (30) includes a packet-service unit (154), an analog line interface (120), and a packet-service/analog line gateway (68). The packet-service unit facilitates radio frequency communication over an air interface with a cellular telecommunications network and provides, amongst others, a packet-service such as GPRS service. the analog line interface is connected to a modem in a terminal equipment unit (50). The packet-service/analog-line gateway (68) enables use of the packet-switched service on the analog line interface (120) and implements a layer 2 point-to-point protocol over the layer 1 analog modulations in a FCT modem (121), thereby providing the FCT with the protocol that the terminal equipment (TE) normally requires on the remote side of a circuit-switched connection. Also, the packet-service/analog-line gateway includes a sequence interpreter (150) which recognizes predetermined gateway-controlling sequences on the analog line (46). In one example mode of the invention, the sequence interpreter recognizes a predetermined sequence of digits generated by a terminal equipment unit as a start packet-switched service command. Upon receipt of a start packet-switched service command the packet-service/analog line gateway coordinates actions on both the packet-service unit (e.g., performing a packet-service attach procedure; activating PDP contexts) and the analog line (starting a point-to-point connection). The packet-switched TCP socket can then be transparently transported over these layers, to and from the TE and the network. In another mode of the invention, the sequence interpreter recognizes another predetermined sequence of digits generated by a terminal equipment unit as an automatic packet-service attach command which results in automatic performance of a packet-service attach procedure upon powering on of the fixed cellular terminal (FCT).

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.