Patent ID: 8102872

Claim:
A method of communicating background noise between a first device and a second device, each device including circuitry for transmitting data to and receiving data from the other device, the method comprising: generating a set of frames comprising a first frame and one or more subsequent background noise frames, the first frame used to communicate the background noise; transmitting from the first device the background noise by using the first frame, the transmitting comprising a first data rate, wherein the transmitting further comprises: comparing, based on a sum of absolute differences of elements of codebook entries for said plurality of background noise frames, a spectrum of a particular background noise frame to an average spectrum of a plurality of background noise frames; and transmitting an update background noise frame if a difference of the spectrums exceeds a spectrum threshold; determining if subsequent background noise frames are stable or transitory from voice; blanking at least one of the subsequent background noise frames based on the determination, wherein blanking comprises not transmitting a frame; transmitting a keep alive packet before subsequent background noise frames are blanked for longer than a threshold time; receiving a background noise frame from the second device; and updating a background noise associated with the second device.