Patent ID: 8494849

Claim:
A method of transmitting speech data to a remote device in a distributed speech recognition system, comprising: dividing an input speech signal into frames; calculating, for each frame, a voice activity value representative of the presence of speech activity in said frame; and grouping said frames into multiframes, each multiframe comprising a predetermined number of consecutive frames corresponding to the smallest transmission unit transferred to said remote device; comprising the steps of: calculating, for each multiframe, a voice activity marker representative of the number of frames in said multiframe having a voice activity value representing speech activity, said voice activity marker being indicative of speech activity in said multiframe; comparing the number of frames representing speech activity in a current multiframe with a first threshold; selectively transmitting the current multiframe to said remote device on the basis of said voice activity marker associated with the current multiframe, if the number of frames representing speech activity in the current multiframe is greater than or equal to said first threshold indicative of speech activity; and if the number of frames representing speech activity in the current multiframe is less than said first threshold, comparing a plurality of frames in at least one of a tail portion and a head portion of the current multiframe with a second threshold indicative of speech activity, wherein said second threshold is less than said first threshold, and wherein said plurality of frames is less than the total number of frames in the current multiframe, and selectively transmitting the current multiframe to said remote device if the number of frames representing speech activity in the plurality of frames is greater than or equal to said second threshold indicative of speech activity.