International Business Machines Corporation

Robert Michael Jordan

Andrew James Ritchie

Caroline Edith Maynard

John Brian Pickering

Zygmunt A Lozinski

Ronald John Bowater

Michael Cobbett

Brian Hulse

Jeremy Peter Hughes

Jeremy Peter James Hughes

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.

Voice processing system

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.

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. One of the problems with known voice processing systems having a TDM bus is that there is no facility to allow the use of third party devices without modifications being made to the TDM connection controller. The bus controller comprises: a custom server 42 for sending a first request including a port identifier and using a first protocol for connection or disconnection of a port indicated by said port identifer on an adapter to the TDM bus 26; a timeslot manager for analyzing the first request to determine the port availability and state and for making a second request; device driver means (48), corresponding to the particular adapter, for sending the appropriate signals to the adapter to connect or disconnect the port on the adapter to a time slot 28 on the TDM; and a connection server 46, corresponding to a particular adapter, for analyzing the second request and for making a third request to the device driver means (48) using a second protocol for connection or disconnection of the port on that adapter to the TDM bus 26.

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Winchester, United Kingdom

Robert Michael Jordan