Patent ID: 7957963

Claim:
An apparatus for converting a sequence of first encoded voice bits into a sequence of second encoded voice bits, the apparatus comprising: a receiver configured to receive first encoded voice bits; a transcoder connected to receive the first encoded voice bits from the receiver and operable to: divide the first encoded voice bits into one or more received frames, with each received frame containing multiple ones of the first encoded voice bits, compute first parameter bits for at least one of the received frames by to applying error control decoding to one or more of the encoded voice bits contained in the received frame, compute speech parameters from the first parameter bits, quantize the speech parameters to produce second parameter bits, determine whether the at least one of the received frames is invalid, if the at least one of the received frames is invalid, substitute invalid frame bits for the second parameter bits, form a transmission frame by applying error control encoding to one or more of the second parameter bits or the invalid frame bits, and include the transmission frame in second encoded voice bits; and a transmitted connected to receive the second encoded voice bits from the transcoder and to transmit the second encoded voice bits.