Patent ID: 8169983

Claim:
A land mobile radio (LMR) system comprising: a first communication site configured to communicate using a first LMR communication protocol; a second communication site configured to communicate using a second LMR communication protocol, the first LMR communication protocol and second LMR communication protocol based on different vocoder formats; and a transcoder configured to: receive LMR content from the first communication site communicated using the first LMR communication protocol, said LMR content generated by a first LMR unit; identify a group to which said first LMR unit belongs, said group being a special interoperability group comprising a plurality of LMR units each employing a plurality of different vocoder types; identify which of said plurality of different vocoder types is preferred by said special interoperability group; digitally convert the LMR content directly to the second LMR communication protocol to be communicated to the second communication site by directly mapping a plurality of vocoder speech vectors from a first vocoder type to said preferred one of said different vocoder types exclusive of any devocoding; buffer and re-time the LMR content contained within a plurality of voice packets to provide a steady stream of said LMR content output from said transcoder; and determine whether said LMR content is late or missing, and realign the LMR content to compensate for said LMR content that is late or missing.