Patent ID: 6061566
Filing Date: 2000-05-09
Classification: H04W

Abstract:
A mobile communication system comprising:at least one mobile station;a plurality of base station systems, each comprising a base station controller and a plurality of base stations;at least one mobile services switching center, each of the at least one mobile services switching center comprising call control means for controlling calls of the at least one mobile station, and switch means for switching the calls of the at least one mobile station; anda plurality of transcoder units, located remotely from the base stations, each of the transcoder units comprising encoding means for encoding a speech signal to be transmitted to the at least one mobile station, and decoding means for decoding an encoded speech signal received from the at least one mobile station;a plurality of network connections being allocated call-specifically between a base station of the plurality of base stations, a corresponding base station controller, and a mobile services switching center of the at least one mobile services switching center, wherein:the encoded speech signal is transmitted in transmission frames over the network connections, the transmission frames include uplink transmission frames and downlink transmission frames,the base stations and the transcoder units comprise means for building, debuilding and synchronizing the transmission frames,the uplink transmission frames transmitted by the base station to a corresponding one of the transcoder units contain synchronizing information, based upon which thecorresponding one of the transcoder units times a transmission of the downlink transmission frames to the base station,a call setup signaling from a calling one of the at least one mobile station is forwarded to a serving one of the at least one mobile services switching center,the serving one of the at least one mobile services switching center checks whether the calling one of the at least one mobile station and a called one of the at least one mobile station are located within an area of a same base station controller according to subscriber data, andthe serving one of the at least one mobile services switching center commands the same base station controller to establish the network connections directly between a serving one of the base stations of the called one of the at least one mobile station and the calling one of the at least one mobile stations located in the area of the same base station controller without routing a call via the transcoder units and the serving one of the at least one mobile services switching center under control of the at least one mobile services switching center so that uplink transmission frames transmitted by a first one of the serving ones of the base stations, and the encoded speech signal included in the uplink transmission frames, transmitted by the first one of the serving ones of the base stations, are forwarded to a second one of the serving ones of the base stations.