Patent ID: 11943153
Assignee: DISH WIRELESS L.L.C.
Field: Digital communication (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H  G | IPC G  H

Claim 6:
7. A node in a telephony network, the node comprising:
a receiver for receiving a first stream of audio representation data conveying a first side of a telephony call from an upstream node in the telephony network;
a transmitter for transmitting a second stream of the audio representation data conveying the first side of the telephony call to a downstream node in the telephony network;
a buffer, comprising:
a buffer input configured to receive the audio representation data,
a buffer memory configured to store the audio representation data received at the buffer input, and
a buffer output configured to provide the audio representation data retrieved from the buffer memory;

an audio representation data router configured to route the audio representation data among the receiver, the buffer input, the buffer output, and the transmitter as follows:
for a first period, routing the audio representation data from the receiver to the transmitter;
for a second period succeeding the first period, for which it is determined that the audio representation data transmitted by the transmitter will not be received by the downstream node in the telephony network, routing the audio representation data from the receiver to the buffer input;
in response to determining that the audio representation data transmitted by the transmitter will be received by the downstream node in the telephony network, for a third period succeeding the second period, routing the audio representation data from the receiver to the buffer input, and routing the audio representation data from the buffer output to the transmitter; and
for a fourth period succeeding the third period, routing the audio representation data from the receiver to the transmitter;

wherein:
the audio representation data router is configured to route the audio representation data from the receiver to the buffer input for an entire duration of the call;
the buffer memory is configured as a circular buffer to store the audio representation data as it is received from the receiver for the entire duration of each call, at each time during the duration of the call containing the audio representation data received during a fixed-length interval ending at the present time;
the buffer is configured to index the audio representation data stored in the buffer memory by the time at which it was received at the buffer input, the node further comprising a receiver configured to receive a lapse notification message from the downstream node, the lapse notification message identifying a time at which a lapse in the audio representation data received by the downstream node from the transmitter began; and
the buffer is configured to provide audio representation data at the buffer output beginning with the audio representation data indexed with the time identified by the lapse notification message received by the receiver.