At&t Bell Laboratories

Mark A Johnson

Stephen A O'Brien

Walter T Hartwell

Joseph Picone

Douglas S Daudelin

Bradley T Wyman

A multipurpose bus connects subsets of intercommunicating modular circuit packs in a complex electrical system. An individual one of the subsets may use the bus leads to transport signals differently from the other subsets. Each of the subsets of the circuit packs is selected to use the bus in particular time intervals. The subset, thus selected, uses the bus leads the way its own protocol governs during those particular time intervals and otherwise ignores the bus.

Multipurpose bus system

An arrangement providing voice activated prompt interrupt for a voice messaging system. The exemplary apparatus includes a telephone line interface, a memory device, a processor, a prompting device and a recording device. Once a call is established at the interface, the processor causes the prompt to be played and simultaneously the incoming signal to be sampled. An echo estimate is determined, subtracted from the incoming signal and a determination is made if incoming speech is detected. If incoming speech is detected, the prompt is stopped and the buffered incoming signal is directed to the recording device.

Voice messaging system with voice activated prompt interrupt

A customer inquiry unit that allows the recognition of human speech in the presence of an initial prerecorded message transmitted by the customer inquiry unit via a telephone network. The customer inquiry system is designed to be utilized to respond to inquiries received via the telephone network. The system functions by responding to a telephone call received via the network to transmit an initial speech message to the customer. Due to a variety of network problems, a portion of the speech energy of the message is reflected back to the inquiry system. This reflected energy is commonly referred to as an echo. If the customer starts to speak before the inquiry system has finished the initial message, the system utilizes an echo canceler to remove the echo received back from the telephone network and only transfers the speech response to a recognition subsystem. The echo canceler adapts to the telephone network during the initial portion of the initial speech message before the customer can respond.

Growing community of inventors

Wheaton, IL, United States of America

Mark A Johnson