Abstract:
A system enabling a user wireless access to a variety software functionalities residing within a personal computer is disclosed. The system includes a portable device, bus and fixed radio part enabling a user of the portable device access to a variety of software functionalities within a personal computer. The portable device generates control commands which are wirelessly transmitted to the fixed radio part. The fixed radio part processes the control commands and provides them to the personal computer via a bus capable of transmitting isochronous signals. An interface associated with the computer is responsive to the control commands and provides the portable device access to the variety of software functionalities in response thereto.

Description:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
     1. Technical Field of the Invention 
     The present invention relates to wireless telephony systems, and more particularly, to a system enabling a link to be formed between portable wireless devices and a personal computer enabling the portable wireless devices to access software functionalities provided by the personal computer. 
     2. Description of Related Art 
     Home cordless telephones and hand-held cellular telephones provide users with basic telephony functions. On their own, cordless and hand-held cellular telephones provide users with the basic abilities to call out and receive calls and further provide a few additional functionalities such as hook switch and flash button that enable a home cordless or hand-held cellular telephone user to access in-phone features such as a dialing memory. Thus, these types of phones provide a user with basic but limited functionalities. 
     The telecommunications industry has developed a variety of applications and functionalities that expand the manner in which telephone calls may be processed. Services such as call logging, voice mail, e-mail, intelligent call routing, and others, have greatly increased the manner in which telephony services may be used. Unfortunately, presently existing systems providing these types of services are normally provided via dedicated hardware that implements all of the desired services within a single dedicated hardware unit. Systems of this type are usually very expensive, thus limiting their use to businesses having the necessary funds to purchase and maintain such systems. A personal user, or even a small business, does not have the resources necessary to implement these types of hardware intensive telephony services on their own. Thus, some manner of enabling personal or small business users to incorporate a wider variety of telephony services and features within their existing cordless or personal use phones/electronic devices at a reasonable cost would be of great benefit. 
     SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
     The present invention overcomes the foregoing and other problems with a system providing a user wireless access to a variety of software functionalities within a personal computer. The system consists of three main portions, namely a portable device enabling wireless access, a radio-fixed part for processing and transmitting/receiving the wireless signal to/from the portable device and a high speed serial bus for interconnecting the radio-fixed part with the personal computer and the software functionalities. 
     A user operating a portable device such as a cordless handset, dual-mode cordless handset, PDA or operate portable laptop computer generates control commands to operate various software functionalities residing within an attached computer. The control commands may consist of digitally encoded data, DTMF or voice commands. These control commands are transmitted to the fixed radio part of the system as a wireless signal. The fixed radio part processes the control command signals from the portable device and transmits these control commands to the attached personal computer via a high-speed serial bus. The high-speed serial bus may operate according to a variety of protocols as long as the bus is capable of supporting isochronous signals. The fixed radio part may also be configured to receive/send control commands and data through a PSTN network via a PSTN interface. This interface would enable interaction with a PSTN line, ISDN line or access to the Internet. 
     Associated with the personal computer is an interface responsive to the control commands received from the portable device that enables access to the software functionalities provided by the personal computer. The interface is responsive to commands received from a remote user accessing the personal computer via a PSTN or ISDN line. 
    
    
     BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
     For a more complete understanding of the present invention, reference is made to the following detailed description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings wherein: 
     FIG. 1 illustrates the system of the present invention for providing increased telephony functions and features via a portable wireless device; 
     FIG. 2 is a block diagram of the radio-fixed part of the system; 
     FIG. 3 is an illustration of a cordless handset; 
     FIG. 4 is a block diagram of a portable device of the system; 
     FIG. 5 is a functional block diagram of the system and the various associated software functionalities that may be provided; 
     FIG. 6 is an illustration of one embodiment of the intelligent agent interface; and 
     FIG. 7 is a functional block diagram of the software architecture enabling interaction between a portable device and the system applications. 
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION 
     Referring now to the drawings, and more particularly to FIG. 1, there is illustrated the system of the present invention. The system is a wireless telephony system enabling the interconnection of a personal computer (PC)  10  to a plurality of portable devices  15 . Interconnection between the personal computer  10  and portable devices  15  is accomplished via a radio-fixed part (RFP)  20  and universal serial bus (USB)  25 . The PC  10  contains a set of controlling software enabling the implementation of a variety of features that are not normally offered by a cordless or hand-held telephone or similar device. 
     The personal computer  10  comprises a well known personal computing system, including a display  30 , keyboard  35 , and central processing unit  40 . In a preferred embodiment, the personal computer  10  is operated according to an operating system, such as Windows 95 or Windows NT. The personal computer  10  provides open application programming interfaces (API) such as telephony API (TAPI) and message API (MAPI) to enable interaction between the portable devices  15  and the personal computer  10 . The personal computer interfaces with the radio-fixed part  20  via a universal serial bus  25  or other type of high speed serial bus such as IEEE1394. 
     The universal serial bus  25  is an external input/output peripheral bus enabling various types of data to be transferred between the radio-fixed part  20  and personal computer  10 . The universal serial bus  25  provides a single interface to the PC  10  for up to 127 different devices. These devices can comprise input/output devices, such as a keyboard, mouse, microphone and speakers, or telecommunication devices, such as interconnections to a public switch telephone network (PSTN), ISDN line or PBX telephone system. 
     The universal serial bus  25  provides for isochronous data transfer with a guaranteed bandwidth and low latencies for telephony and audio data at data transfer speeds of between 10 Kb/s to 10 Mb/s. The bus  25  includes plug and play capabilities such that devices may be dynamically attached/detached and the system reconfigured with the addition or removal of various peripheral devices. While the system has been described with respect to the use of a universal serial bus, any other bus standard enabling similar functionalities and isochronous data transfer would be applicable. 
     A radio-fixed part  20  connects to the PC  10  through the universal serial bus  25  and provides the hardware and firmware necessary to interface the PC  10  and portable devices  15  with an analog pubic switched telephone network  50 . The radio-fixed part  20  is designed to support multiple portable devices  15  through twelve simultaneous radio channels and four network interfaces which can be analog or digital. Referring now to FIG. 2, there is illustrated a block diagram of the radio-fixed part  20 . Signals from the portable devices  15  are received via antenna  55 . The received signals are initially processed via a Digital European Cordless Telephone (DECT) radio module  60 . In one embodiment the DECT radio module  60  is implemented within a Rembrandt chip set. The DECT radio module  60  transmits and receives the audio and control data to and from the portable devices  15  using the DECT air interface standard. 
     A burst mode controller (BMC)  65  provides the interface between the DECT radio module  60  and digital signal processor (DSP)  70 . The BMC  65  implements the DECT physical and partial MAC layer processing. The BMC  65  provides a 64-slot ADPCM highway, a DECT core for automatic burst building and burst decoding, a DECT encryption and decryption engine, DECT frame synchronization, a software programmable radio interface to interface with a wide range of radio architectures, and a host interface. 
     The enterprise processor  75  interfaces with the BMC  65  and controls the DECT radio module  60  as well as passing audio data and control signals to and from the digital signal processor (DSP)  70 . The enterprise processor  75  is an ASIC processor supporting all layers of the DECT radio module  60  firmware. Associated with the enterprise processor  75  are 128 Kb of external SRAM  80 , the contents of which are downloaded during system initialization. 
     The digital signal processor (DSP)  70  supports all speech related functions and interfaces to the PC  10  over the universal serial bus  25 . Functions supported by the DSP  70  include PSTN data handling, DTMF DECT and dial out, echo cancellization, self-test, boot load during system initialization and the universal serial bus interface for the radio-fixed part  20 . Associated with the digital signal processor  70  are 128 K words of program memory  85  and data memory  90 , along with four megabits of flash memory  95  for permanent and reusable storage for the DSP and enterprise processor firmware. 
     The ADPCM/PCM transcoder  100  handles real-time translation of audio data between the PSTN (or PC  10 ) and the portable devices  15 . The transcoder  100  provides full duplex, six channel simultaneous translation from/to 32 Kbps ADPCM data to/from 64 Kbps PCM data. In one embodiment an MC145532 transcoder manufactured by Motorola is utilized. 
     Analog PSTN interface  105  supports two PSTN connections. The PSTN interface  105  consist of dual PCM codec, speech network, ring detect, and other circuitry necessary to interface with an analog phone line. The hardware implementation is common for all supported countries, however, any regional dependencies, such as line impedance, are controlled by the firmware. The JTAG test interface  110  enables system self test as well as factory testing of the radio-fixed part  20 . 
     The power conditioning and management circuitry  115  provides external power via an AC adapter with world class accepted input voltage range. The external power input is further regulated and filtered to enable the necessary power requirements for the DEC radio module  60  and the digital logic circuitry. The FDGA/ASIC  120  provides the universal serial bus interface, including universal serial bus interface engine  125 , hardware implementation of the mail box  130  between the enterprise processor  75  and the DSP  70 , the PSTN buffer memory  135 , ADPCM/PCM transcoder buffer memory  140  and other logic  142  necessary to make all radio-fixed part components interoperable. 
     The portable device  15  comprises wireless devices designed to communicate with the radio-fixed part  20  or with other portable devices. A variety of portable devices  15  may be utilized by a user to access the software features of the personal computer  10  via the radio-fixed part  20 . A cordless handset  141 , as shown in FIG. 3, comprises the preferred type of access device. A cordless handset  141  would include at least four buttons, including on/off  143 , hook  144 , flash  146  and intelligent agent  147  (IA). The on/off button  143  is used to turn the handset power on and off. The hook button  144  is used to make external calls and receive external/internal calls. The flash button  140  is used to access services provided by the public network. Finally, the IA button  147  enables access to services provided by the personal computer  10  through an intelligent agent interface. 
     A dual-mode cordless handset would have similar button functionalities. A user may also access the radio-fixed part  20  via a personal digital assistant (PDA) or portable computer (such as a lap top) including a wireless communications interface for receiving and downloading various types of data. Finally, a wireless electrical sensor may communicate with the radio-fixed part  20  to enable control of various electronic devices and appliances within range of the radio-fixed part  20  via the personal computer  10  or a remote user accessing the personal computer through an outside PSTN line or another portable device  15 . 
     Referring now to FIG. 4, there is illustrated a block diagram of the portable device  15  architecture necessary to provide a wireless interface with the radio-fixed part  20 . The portable device  15  requires a DECT radio module  138  for transmitting and receiving radio signals to/from the radio-fixed part  20 . A microprocessor  140  controls the DECT radio module  138  via a burst mode controller  145 . The burst mode controller  145  implements the DECT physical and partial MAC layer processing. The microprocessor  140  includes associated static memory  150  for temporary storage purposes, and a non-volatile memory  155  for storing microprocessor firmware. 
     A user interface  160  includes the various flash, hook and intelligent interface buttons discussed previously enabling the user to interact with system functionalities. The user interface  160  would further enable the entry and receipt of various types of data. The power conditioning and management circuitry  165  controls charging of batteries (not shown) powering the portable device  15  whenever the portable device  20  is resting within a storage cradle. The power conditioning and management circuitry  165  further regulates and filters the battery output supplied to the DECT radio module  138  and the digital logic circuitry of the portable device  15 . 
     Referring now to FIG. 5, there is illustrated a functional block diagram of the system more simply illustrating the interaction of the components and the software applications  190  of the PC  10 . The PC  10  includes central processing unit (CPU)  40 , a memory  170 , and a universal serial bus controller  175 . The CPU  40  and memory  170  communicate with the universal serial bus controller  175  via a system internal bus  180 . The PC  10  may contain a modem  171  and DSP  172  to facilitate remote interconnection directly with the PC rather than through universal serial bus  25 . 
     The CPU  40  and memory  170  enable the application of a variety of PC software functions  190 . The PC software functions  190  include, but are not limited to, media drivers  195  for displays, speakers and the like; modem drivers  200  for driving PC and universal serial bus modems; universal serial bus drivers  205  for controlling the USB  15  interface between the various system components,; telephone resources  225  enabling a variety of telephony functionalities; the speech recognition/text to speech (SR/TTS) engine  220  provides speech recognition capabilities; the switch engine  215  for controlling telephony switching functions; the CC (call control) engine  210 ; a scheduler  230 ; CM (configuration management)  235 ; intelligent agent  240 ; SBT (screen-based telephony)  245 ; call control  250  and AA (automatic attendant)  255  for automated call answer processing. 
     The intelligent agent  240  provides an interface enabling the portable devices  15  to access the PC software functionalities  190 . The intelligent agent interface  240  responds to input from the portable device  15  and is actuated by the pressing of the intelligent interface button  147  of the portable device  15 . Once the intelligent agent interface  140  is activated, a user may access a variety of software functionalities, such as e-mail, voice mail or fax by merely pressing a button to actuate DTMF signaling or providing keyword inputs to actuate a voice recognition engine  220 . One potential embodiment of the intelligent agent interface is illustrated in FIG.  6 . 
     The PC  10  is interconnected to the base station  260  and modem  265  portions of the radio-fixed part  20  via a universal serial bus  25 . The base station portion  260  of the radio-fixed part  20  provides the radio communication link to a portable device  15 , such as a cordless handset  275 . A sensor controller  270  may also be interconnected to the universal serial bus  25  to enable the wireless control of a remote sensor  280  connected to some other type of electrical or electronic device. The sensor  280  may be used to actuate or deactuate devices such as the door bell, power outlet or motion sensor. In this way, a user may access the sensor controller  270  locally to activate the electrical or electronic device through the cordless handset  275 , or remotely, by accessing the sensor controller through universal serial bus modem  265  or PC modem  171 . 
     Referring now to FIG. 7, there is illustrated a functional diagram of the software architecture of the system. The software architecture consists of four separate software layers enabling communication between various PC software functions  190  and a portable device  15 . These layers include the application layer  200 , application program interface (API)  205 , service provider layer  210  and resource layer  215 . The application layer  200  comprises the various PC software functions  190  included within the PC  10 . The software functions  190  can include, but are not limited to, screen based telephony; the intelligent agent interface; switching functionalities, such as internal calls, external calls, and conference calls; call logging, voice mail, e-mail, etc. These functions are all responsive to input received from a portable device  15 . 
     The portable device  15  and personal computer  10  controlling software comprise the resource layer  215  and control the physical operation of these hardware devices. The service provider layer  210  controls the transfer of data between the various hardware devices comprising the system, such as the PC  10 , radio-fixed part  20  and portable devices  15 . The data transmitted between the hardware devices is able to interact with the software functions of the application layer  200  via the API layer  205 . The API layer  205  enables receipt and transmission data by the software functions  190 . 
     The software functions  190  which may be provided by the PC include full telephony service functionalities, including the handling of incoming and outgoing telephone calls, call holding and transferring, voice activated name dialing, directory assisted name dialing, and last number redialing. Telephony services may also include the logging and recording of incoming calls or recording of memos via telephone functions. Messaging services may also be provided, including e-mail, voice mail, and fax. A reminder service functionality may provide a user with periodic reminders of important events, meetings and the like. An intelligent address book function may be used for the routing of incoming calls to particular individuals based upon a caller identification number or as a directory service for enabling connection through particular callers. Interworking service functions may provide interworking for modem, PSTN and Internet services. Thus, for example, a user could access the Internet through a portable device  15 . The above list of service functionalities is merely intended to be illustrative of the various services which may be provided using this system and any service capable of being implemented via PC software is applicable to the invention as described. 
     Although a preferred embodiment of the method and apparatus of the present invention has been illustrated in the accompanying Drawings and described in the foregoing Detailed Description, it is understood that the invention is not limited to the embodiment disclosed, but is capable of numerous rearrangements, modifications, and substitutions without departing from the spirit of the invention as set forth and defined by the following claims.