Computers integrated with a cordless telephone

The present invention is directed to a computer system that has at least two computers which are connected via cordless telephone. The handset of the cordless telephone is integrated with a portable computer and the base station of the cordless telephone is integrated with a regular desktop or desk-side computer. The hand-held computer includes a microprocessor, a display, storage, a keypad to enter data, a microphone to receive voice data and speak to play voice data, and an antenna to communicate with the base station. The base station includes receiver and transmitter and an antenna, signal controller and the means for acting to a telephone system. The apparatus can be adapted for use with a television and a VCR.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION
 The present invention is directed to a computer system that has at least
 two computers which are connected via a cordless telephone and
 applications thereof.
 BACKGROUND
 There are a variety of schemes for connecting personal computers. They vary
 from the traditional point-to-point connection using wires between two
 computers to wireless local-area-network for a whole array of computers.
 As hand-held personal computers get smaller, the connection requirements
 for these small units to their large counterparts become more unique. In
 this case, it is too cumbersome to use wires for connection and too
 expensive to use complete wireless local area network in which the
 software overhead is larger. Furthermore, local-area-networks are not yet
 ready to handle the time-bound voice signals which are likely to be common
 in those small hand-held units which are likely designed to handle voice
 signals. The computer system disclosed herein will provide data and voice
 connections between a hand-held computer and a regular personal computer
 while each one of them can communicate to outsiders via public telephone
 lines independently.
 OBJECTS
 An object of the present invention is to provide a device for a user to
 control, enter inputs, or retrieve outputs to or from a computer, for
 instance, the device can emulate a wireless mouse, or can be used as
 wireless microphone and loudspeaker. It is a general-purpose,
 programmable, wireless, and multimedia device.
 Another object of the present invention is to provide a device which can be
 programmed as a cordless display telephone in which the incoming data can
 be shown on the device's display. It is not just a combination of
 telephone and computer. The telephone function is greatly enriched. For
 example, call screening and call automation can easily be implemented.
 Furthermore, with the built-in pressure-sensitive touch screen, a user can
 capture and display handwriting notes directly.
 Another object of the present invention is to provide a device which
 divides the tasks of signal processing between two devices. In speech
 recognition and handwriting recognition, the voice signal is first
 processed on the hand-held unit, if there is no match on the signal, then
 it will pass to the base unit where the processing power is much higher.
 Another object of the present invention is to to provide a device wherein
 the transmission of voice and data between the handset and the base units
 can be transmitted simultaneously. The voice and data are transmitted
 simultaneously by frequency-division or time-division multiplexing.
 Another object of the present invention is to provide a device which is a
 combination of a display and a touch screen which allows part of a menu to
 be downloaded to the hand-held unit from the base unit. By looking at the
 display on the hand-held unit, a user can activate the menu by touching
 the screen. Since the display is much closer to the user, it is much
 easier to see and act on compared to the menu on the display of the base
 computer.
 It is another object of the present invention to provide new means to
 implement a truly pocketable digital assistant for office and/or home
 applications. It includes the digital assistant consisting of minimal
 hardware, such as a speaker, a microphone, a keypad, a cordless link, and
 a base station comprising a PC or a workstation or a custom system with a
 cordless link.
 It is another object of the present invention to provide new means to make
 cellular connection. It includes a cellular radio residing in or in the
 neighborhood of the base station that is used as a relay point between the
 digital assistant and the cellular network.
 SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
 The present invention is directed to an apparatus having a first computer,
 a second computer and a base station. The base station is adapted for
 wireless communication to the first computer and the second computer. The
 base station has means for communication on a telephone line. The first
 computer has a first means for communication with the base station. The
 second computer has a second means for wireless communication with the
 base station.

DESCRIPTION
 A pair of devices that make up the personal computer-communication system
 according to the present invention consist of a hand-held unit which
 communicates with a base unit via any wireless means. The hand-held unit
 has processor, memory, display, touch-screen digitizer, modem, microphone,
 loudspeaker, audio processing module, telephone signal processing module,
 and wireless module. The base unit has similar components as in the
 hand-held unit and acts as a relay station to other telecommunication
 infrastructures, such as public switched telephone network (PSTN),
 cellular phone, and local area network (LAN). The base unit can be
 integrated into a personal computer or workstation.
 Both data and voice can be communicated between the hand-held and base
 units simultaneously. Data include all digitally coded information, for
 instance, FAX and coded images. Voice can be transmitted simultaneously in
 analog and digital forms.
 The hand-held unit can be used as a conventional cordless telephone as well
 as a cordless display telephone. Some examples of its usages are: (1) the
 caller's hand-held unit displays a menu sent along with the receiving
 party's greeting message. Instead of listening to a long message about how
 to push buttons to direct your call, you can now look at the menu and
 touch the item listed on the menu to have your call directed without
 memorizing which button to push. The touch screen is programmed according
 to the menu; (2) the user can write a short note on the digitizer which is
 then digitized, compressed, and sent to the other side when he/she is
 still on the phone; (3) the user can view a short text message such as
 name and address before sending or after receiving it.
 This will save time and reduce errors compared to just exchanging it
 verbally through the phone alone.
 If the base unit is integrated into a PC, then the PC can be programmed as
 a digital telephone answering machine. The PC's hard disk will be the
 storage. Furthermore, if a user programs his base unit to accept other
 hand-held units, then his visitors can leave a voice message to his base
 unit.
 The touch-screen digitizer (pressure sensitive) on the hand-held unit can
 be programmed to control the cursor movement on the PC's display if the
 base unit is connected to a PC. It becomes a wireless mouse or trackball
 emulator. When the user places his/her thumb or finger on the digitizer it
 will locate the cursor on the PC's screen. The cursor on the PC's display
 will move according to the moving direction and speed of the finger on the
 digitizer. The finger movement on the digitizer is coded and sent to the
 PC where it is decoded and intersects the mouse routine to control the
 cursor. There are keys next to the digitizer to activate the mouse action
 keys. This scheme can further be incorporated into window/menu driven
 system in which part of the pull-down menu is transmitted to the hand-held
 unit for easy viewing and selections. This is particularly useful for
 collaborative work such as two persons comparing files or drawings on one
 PC display.
 Since the hand-held unit has its own microprocessor, it can be used as a
 co-processor for the base unit. One of the major co-processing tasks could
 be the I/O processing such as voice and handwriting pre-processing. In
 speech recognition applications, it acts as a wireless microphone, audio
 digitizer, and compressor and the coded information of speech is sent to
 the base for further processing such as spectrum analysis and comparisons.
 In some cases, the recognition tasks can be split into two levels. The
 first level recognition which is for simple words such as numbers is done
 on the hand-held unit. The second level which is for general words and
 continuous speech is done on the base unit where high-power processor is
 commonly used. The search and comparison routines of the recognition
 software look at the database on the hand-held unit first and pass to the
 base unit via the wireless link if there is a miss. This two-level scheme
 can be applied to handwriting recognition also, for example, the hand-held
 unit can be made to recognize single alphanumerical characters and the
 base unit for complex handwriting scratches.
 The useful range of a hand-held unit can be extended if a base unit which
 is connected to a cellular phone network or satellite phone/data network
 is installed in a car or truck. A user can still gain an access to the
 phone and data network while he is on the road. A side benefit of this
 arrangement is that the hand-held unit has much lower radio-frequency (RF)
 radiation than that of most cellular phones. This is because the hand-held
 unit described here is designed for short-range communications and hence
 has very low level of RF radiation.
 Block diagrams of a computer system (shown in FIG. 6) integrated with a
 cordless telephone are shown in FIGS. 1 and 2. FIG. 1 is the block diagram
 of a hand-held computer which can be in the handset of a cordless
 telephone. The basic components of the hand-held unit (300 of FIG. 6) are
 microprocessors 2, read-only memory (ROM) 4, random-access memory (RAM) 6,
 keypads 8, a LCD display 10, and a digitizer 12. The digitizer 12 is
 transparent and overlaid on top of the LCD display. The digitizer 12 is
 connected to microprocessor 2 through analog-to-digital converter 3. For
 the convenience of illustration, only the basic components are shown in
 FIG. 1. However, it will be apparent to one of skill in the art how to
 construct the hand-held unit 300. Other circuits such as memory
 management, direct-memory access controller, input/output controller, bus
 interface, timer, clock and power management are not shown in FIG. 1. A
 personal computer card slot 14 is shown to demonstrate the expandability
 of the hand-held computer. A memory card can be plugged into slot 14 for
 expanding the system memory or an I/O card can be plugged into slot 14
 such as a bar-code reader can be used to read bar codes. A signal traffic
 controller 16 is used to direct the telephone and data signal traffic
 under the command of the microprocessor 2. Microprocessor 2 does the
 encoding and decoding of the digital traffic signals between the handset
 300 and the base station 302 of the cordless telephone 300 and controls
 the signal traffic through the two switches, SW-1 and SW-2. If data
 traffic is desired, the receiver 18 and transmitter 20 will be switched to
 connect to the receiver end 22 and transmitting end 24 of the modem 26,
 respectively. If voice traffic is needed, the receiver 18 and transmitter
 20 will be switched to the loudspeaker 20 and microphone 30, respectively.
 The switches SW-1 and SW-2 can be controlled by commands keyed in from the
 key pads 8 or decoded from the signals transmitted from the base station
 302. When the switches are connected to the modem 26, both the loudspeaker
 28 and microphone 30 will be muted. The modem 24 used in the hand-held
 unit 300 is a public switched telephone network (PSTN), for example,
 compatible one such as the Hayes compatible modem or a dedicated modem for
 RF communication such as Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying (GMSK) modem shown
 in FIG. 3. The receiver 18 and transmitter 20 can be a narrow-band FM or a
 spread-spectrum type. The voice signal can be sent to modulate the carrier
 frequency directly or a subcarrier which is then modulating the carrier
 frequency.
 FIG. 2 is the block diagram of the base station (which can be the base of a
 cordless telephone) 302 of a cordless telephone system according to the
 present invention integrated with a computer 304. The base station 302 can
 be a separate physical unit or a separate unit and connected to a computer
 304 via a parallel, serial, or other input/out port 306. It can also be an
 add-on card to be plugged into the computer's common bus. The signal
 controller 200 in the base station 302 takes the command order from the
 computer 304 or from the signals 308 sent from the hand-held unit via
 antenna 310 which base station 302 receives by antenna 312 and flips the
 switches, SW-3 and SW-4. Controller 200 also generates and decodes the
 common PSTN 314 dual tone multi-frequency (DTMF) signals to and from the
 PSTN as well as the subscriber loop direct-current signals through the
 data access arrangement (DAA) 202 which is the interface device to the
 telephone line. If the computer 304 at the base station wants to send data
 to the handset, it tells the signal controller 200 to switch the receiver
 204 and transmitter 206 to the modem 208 and wakes up the modem 26 at the
 hand-held unit 300. After handshaking and acknowledging, data will then be
 sent to the hand-held unit 300. The procedure will be reciprocated, if the
 hand-held unit 300 wants to send data to the base computer 304. If the
 hand-held unit wants to send data or voice to the outsiders via PSTN 314,
 then the receiver 204 and transmitter 206 will be connected to the DAA 202
 directly. The in-coming calls from the PSTN 314 will be intercepted by the
 base station signal controller 200 and the base computer 304. Voice calls
 will be forwarded to the hand-held unit 300 if it is available or answered
 by the base computer 304 which emulates a telephone answering machine.
 Data calls will be received and stored in the base computer 304. Depending
 on the nature of the data, some of them will be connected to the base
 station. In this multi-line situation, the base computer can be used as a
 line controller also. The base station 302 can also be made to handle
 multiple handset units. The voice signals from the handset can be sent to
 the optional speech recognition unit 216 at base station for voice
 commands or dictation.
 FIG. 3 shows another embodiment of a computer integrated with the base of a
 cordless telephone using a dedicated modem for the wireless link and a
 telephone modem for the PSTN link. The voice signals are sent and received
 in analog format but the data on the wireless link are modulated and
 demodulated using a dedicated modem, for instance, a GMSK modem. The
 modulated data signals are first received by the receiver 204 and
 demodulated through the dedicated modem 209. The received data stream will
 be stored in the computer 304. Some actions will be performed on the
 received data such as error detection and corrections. The corrected data
 stream will be sent to its destination as directed. If the destination is
 a PSTN link, they will be sent to a phone modem 210 then the PSTN via the
 DAA 202.
 FIGS. 4 and 5 are another embodiment of the present invention in which the
 voice signal is first digitized and sent through the wireless link in
 digital format. Referring to FIG. 4, voice signal picking up from the
 microphone 30 is first digitized and encoded by the audio signal processor
 42 and then stored in the memory 6 through the processor 2. The digitized
 voice signal will be subjected to further processing such as adding codes
 for error detection and correction and wireless communications links. The
 ready-to-send signal is then fed to a wireless modem 209, the wireless
 transceiver 41, and antenna 312, in sequence. In the base station, see
 FIG. 5, the wireless signal is received by the antenna 312 and wireless
 transceiver 41. After demodulating from the wireless modem 209, the
 received raw digital data stream is then stored in memory 16 via the
 processor 2. The data will be decoded and corrected if errors are found in
 the wireless transmission. The processor 2 will identify the nature and
 destination of the data which is encoded in the data stream when it is
 sent from the handset. If it is a digitized voice signal and intended to
 go to a PSTN link, then a control signal will be sent to the telephone
 signal controller 231 which in turn will connect the audio signal
 processor 42 to the data access arrangement 202. The voice part of the
 data will be sent to the audio signal processor 42 thereafter. If the data
 is not a digitized voice and intended to go to the PSTN link, then the
 telephone signal controller 231 will connect the phone modem 210 to the
 DAA 202 and the data is passed to the phone modem 210 by the processor 2.
 If the data is intended for something else, it will be directed to other
 PC/phone devices 241 or another personal computer 304. The data traffic
 coming from the base station will follow similar route described here but
 in opposite direction.
 FIG. 7 shows another embodiment of a system of the present invention
 adopted for use in home applications. In addition to the implementation
 shown in FIG. 1, an universal IR module is added to the hand-held unit
 500. The base station 502 can be a stand-alone unit or an adaptor plugged
 in a PC or a set-top box and has connection to external networks, such as
 PSTN, cable, and on-line services. By combining the universal IR module
 and cordless RF module into one unit, the hand-held unit 500 can use not
 only IR to control a TV 504, a VCR 506, and other appliances, but also RF
 for cordless telephone and remote access to external network and
 computation and storage resources in base station 502. An exemplary list
 of applications include interactive TV, home shopping, video games,
 household assistance, and on-line services for education, and
 entertainment by using remote speech and handwriting recognition, and
 simultaneous data-voice communication.
 FIG. 8 illustrates another system configuration using present invention for
 mobile applications. It includes a hand-held unit 400, a base station and
 cellular phone 404 are integrated into a portable computer 402. Hand-held
 unit 400 relays all the computation-intensive tasks, such as speech and
 handwriting recognition, to portable computer 402 that executes those
 tasks and sends the results back to hand-held unit 400 through a RF or IR
 cordless link. One important application model shows cellular telephone
 404, portable computer 402 are in a carrying case. A user uses the
 low-power IR or RF link to access the cellular telephone 404 through the
 base station in portable computer 402. The advantage is that the user only
 exposes to low-RF power (between 1 to 10 mW) instead of high-RF power of
 cellular telephone 404. In light of the recent health concerns caused by
 the transmit power of cellular telephone 404, this application provides a
 unique, safe solution for a user.
 While the present invention has been described with respect to preferred
 embodiments, numerous modifications, changes, and improvements will occur
 to those skilled in the art without departing from the spirit and scope of
 the invention.