International Business Machines Corporation

Andrew James Ritchie

Robert Michael Jordan

John Brian Pickering

Nicholas David Butler

David Seager Renshaw

Zygmunt A Lozinski

Ronald John Bowater

Michael Cobbett

Brian Hulse

Jeremy Peter James Hughes

Caroline Edith Maynard

David John Prime

A voice processing system is disclosed having a first interface for receiving telephone calls from the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) and application software for processing received PSTN telephone calls. The voice processing system supports an API to allow the first interface to inform the application software of the presence of the call. The voice processing system further has a second interface for receiving telephone calls from an internet protocol (IP) network, and a signaling subsystem for routing an IP call from the second interface to the application software. This signaling subsystem uses the same API as is used to inform the application software about PSTN calls. Therefore, it is transparent to the application software whether an incoming call has been received from the IP network rather than the PSTN.

Voice processing system

A distributed voice processing system comprises two or more voice processing machines A, B, connected by an isochronous network. In the preferred embodiment this network comprises an ATM switch 80 and appropriate ATM links A, B. Each of the voice processing machines includes telephone line interface units connected to the telephone network via respective telephony channels , a TDM bus , voice resources (such as voice recognition, voice response functionality, etc), and an ATM adapter to allow communications over the ATM network. In operation, a call may be received at the line interface unit at a first voice processing machine, and placed onto a TDM bus at that machine. The call is then taken off the TDM bus by the ATM adapter, and routed over the ATM network to the ATM adapter at a second machine, which places the call on the TDM bus at this second machine. The call is then processed by a voice resource at this second machine, which has access to the TDM bus, thereby allowing a call to be handled by a line interface unit at a first voice processing machine and a voice resource at a second voice processing machine.

Distributed voice processing system

A voice processing system comprising a digital trunk processor,and a system unit,incorporates a local voice recognition resource,provided on a digital signal processing board,, and can access a remote voice recognition resource,in a server,via a local area network,. The system provides a barge-in facility for the recognition resource on the remote server, whereby a prompt is played out to the user, and the incoming telephony signal is fed into a voice activity detector on the digital trunk processor. Responsive to a detection of incoming voice activity, the outgoing prompt is terminated, and the incoming data is transferred over the local area network to the remote server for recognition.

A bus connection controller in a voice processing is for managing the connection of a timeslot on a time-division multiplex (TDM) bus to a port on an adapter. The voice processing system includes basic time-division multiplex (TDM) connection management to enable the coordination of connections between resources such as channels on line cards (SPacks or VPacks), and channels on digital signal processor (DSPs) cards that provide, amongst others things, voice recognition, text-to-speech, fax capabilities and so on. Problems are encountered when a telephone call in a voice processing system ends suddenly because one of the callers hangs up. If the telephony channel has connections with other channels or resources via a TDM bus, callers may hear spurious data. To address this problem each call is associated with its corresponding connection on the TDM bus and each connection is associated with its connection details including the adapters and ports involved in connecting the calls. When one of the calls ends all the relevant ports involved with the connection are immediately disconnected.

Bus connection set up and tear down

A voice processing system is attached to a switch via an ATM link, the switch being in turn attached to the telephone network. The voice processing system handles incoming or outgoing calls transmitted over the ATM link, which supports a plurality of virtual connections. The voice processing system includes a time division multiplex (TDM) bus having multiple timeslots, and an adapter card for attachment to the ATM link for transferring data between a virtual connection on the ATM link and one or more timeslots on the TDM bus.

A distributed voice processing system comprises two or more voice processing machines 50A, 50B, connected by an isochronous network. In the preferred embodiment this network comprises an ATM switch 80 and appropriate ATM links 82A, 82B. Each of the voice processing machines includes telephone line interface units 52 connected to the telephone network 5 via respective telephony channels 15, a TDM bus 54, voice resources 55 (such as voice recognition, voice response functionality, etc), and an ATM adapter 58 to allow communications over the ATM network. In operation, a call may be received at the line interface unit at a first voice processing machine, and placed onto a TDM bus at that machine. The call is then taken off the TDM bus by the ATM adapter, and routed over the ATM network to the ATM adapter at a second machine, which places the call on the TDM bus at this second machine. The call is then processed by a voice resource at this second machine, which has access to the TDM bus, thereby allowing a call to be handled by a line interface unit at a first voice processing machine and a voice resource at a second voice processing machine.

This invention relates to an intelligent peripheral (IP) for connecting to a telephone network and providing added capabilities to the network. More particularly the invention relates to programmable suppression of call answer supervision by an intelligent peripheral or a voice recognition unit in a telephone network. The method comprises the steps of: the peripheral device receiving a call setup message from a network switch when a call is being initiated. The IP, on receipt of the call setup signal, suppresses the normal answer signal output and instead outputs a progress signal to the network switch. For an ISDN network the progress signal is a Progress Indicator PI=08 signal.

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Eastleigh, United Kingdom

Andrew James Ritchie