Patent ID: 7161931

Claim:
A signal processing system for processing modulated signals and voiceband signals for transmission over a packet based network, the signal processing system comprising: means for receiving one of the modulated or voiceband signals at a respective input port; means for detecting whether the received signal is a modulated signal or a voiceband signal by detecting presence of a predetermined tone; a data pump for demodulating the received signal to generate a first data stream, if the received signal is a modulated signal; a voice encoder for encoding the received signal to generate a second data stream, if the received signal is a voiceband signal; a channel interface for outputting onto the packet based network the second data stream including the encoded voiceband signal or the first data stream including the demodulated signal, wherein the encoded information comprises voice signals; a voice activity detector which suppresses the voice signals without speech; and a comfort noise estimator which generates comfort noise parameters when the voice activity detector suppresses the voice signals, said comfort noise parameters being selectively outputted on the packet based network.