Patent ID: 6243568
Filing Date: 2001-06-05
Classification: H04B

Abstract:
In a digital wireless communications system including a plurality of intercommunicating transceivers to send and receive messages of digitally encoded information, a method for a receiver to indicate the signal quality of a received message to the user of the receiver comprising the steps of:a) decoding the received digital message;b) following step a), estimating the quality of the received message to derive a signal quality estimate;c) activating a static warning indicator in response to the signal quality estimate in step b), whereby a transceiver user is warned of a poor communications link;d) presenting the information decoded in step a) to the user;e) averaging the estimated signal quality of messages received over a plurality of predetermined first periods of time to create an average signal quality estimate; andf) activating the indicator in step c) in response to the average signal quality estimated in step e), the static warning indicator activated having a predetermined indicator signal amplitude, a predetermined indicator signal duration, a predetermined indicator signal spectral content, and a predetermined time domain shape, which vary in response to the average signal quality estimated in step e), to present the warning indicator to the user over a predetermined number of predetermined second periods of time, whereby the static noise patterns presented to the user closely simulate the characteristics of an analog receiver.