US 6,556,965 B1Granted

Wired and cordless telephone systems with extended frequency range

AssigneeLegerity, Inc.

InventorsDavid J. Borland, Paul R. Teich

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Abstract

A telephone that communicates high-quality audio signals and a method for communicating an audio signal with an extended frequency range over a telephone network. The cordless telephone has a handset unit with a sampler circuit, a compression circuit, decompression circuit, as well as analog-to-digital (A/D) and digital-to-analog (D/A) converters, which handset is coupled by an infrared (IR) wireless link to a base unit connected to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). In one embodiment, the telephone includes a sampler, a compression block, a telephone port, a decompression block, and a digital-to-analog (D/A) converter. The sampler receives a analog audio signal and digitizes the signal into a high-quality (705.6 kbps) digital audio signal. The compression block then encodes the digital audio signal into a compressed digital signal at a lower bit rate (such as 150 kbps or 56 kbps) with a compression algorithm such as MP3. The compressed digital signal is communicated through the telephone port to a telephone network. An incoming compressed digital signal is received from the telephone network by the telephone port and provided to the decompression block. From the received compressed digital signal, the decompression block reconstructs a digital audio signal at the high data rate. The D/A converter generates a reconstructed analog audio signal in response to the reconstructed digital audio signal.

Claims13

Dependent claims

A telephone for high-quality audio signals, the telephone comprising:

a sampler circuit configured to receive an analog audio signal and to digitize the analog audio signal, thereby generating a digital audio signal at a first data rate, and wherein the sampler circuit samples the analog audio signal at a rate of at least 44 kHz;
a compression circuit coupled to said sampler circuit wherein said compression circuit generates a compressed digital signal at a second data rate less than or equal to the first data rate in response to the digital audio signal;
a telephone port coupled to said compression circuit and configured to provide the compressed digital signal to a telephone line;
a decompression circuit coupled to said telephone port;
wherein said decompression circuit is configured to receive a received compressed digital signal through said telephone port from the telephone line, and wherein said decompression circuit is configured to generate a reconstructed digital audio signal at the first data rate in response to the received compressed digital signal;
and
a digital-to-analog (D/A) converter coupled to said decompression circuit and configured to generate a reconstructed analog audio signal in response to the reconstructed digital audio signal;
wherein said sampler circuit, said compression circuit, said decompression circuit, and said D/A converter are comprised in a handset unit and wherein said telephone port is comprised in a base unit and wherein the handset unit and the base unit are coupled by a wireless link, wherein the wireless link is an infared (IR) link.

5 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.