Patent ID: 6662211
Filing Date: 2003-12-09
Classification: H04M

Abstract:
A method of forming a conference in a telecommunications system, which system has multiple nodes connected by an inter-nodal network, each node being connected to ports for receiving incoming channels of voice information to be switched by the telecommunications system, and at least one of said nodes being a conferencing node which contains one or more digital signal processors (DSPs) the method including the steps of:a. storing the incoming samples of voice information; b. identifying which samples are assigned to a particular conference set up by the system; c. accumulating the samples, which are destined for a particular conference in an accumulator in a high-speed memory component of an associated DSP; d. calculating the energy of each channel to obtain an energy value; e. storing said energies in said accumulator in said DSP; f. surveying said accumulated energies for the N loudest channels to identify the N loudest channels at that instance; g. summing the N loudest channels of voice information to produce a conference broadcast output; h. subtracting each N loudest channel of voice information from said sum and writing the result as a conferenced output sample to each participant who is one of the N loudest channels; i. writing said sum out to all non-N loudest channels as a conferenced output sample; and j. writing said sum out for any half-duplex conference participants.