Patent ID: 7606543

Claim:
The method of indicating the quality of a received signal at a mobile phone, the received signal sent to the mobile phone by a remote transmitter, said method for use in conjunction with a digital transmission and receiving system and comprising: detecting reception of the received a signal from the remote transmitter at the mobile phone, inspecting said received signal by comparing said received signal with a predetermined threshold for determining its quality, at least in terms of a percentage of acceptable, wherein inspecting the received signal comprises determining a bit error rate (BER) of the received signal over a sampling period, providing an output correlated to the results of said inspecting step such that when said received signal has met said predetermined threshold with which said received signal is compared during said operation of comparing, the output is of a first type and, otherwise, the output is of a second type, the second type different than the first type, and the output indicative of the quality of the received signal in terms of the percentage of acceptable, ensuring that said received signal has failed to meet said threshold value for a predetermined time-out period before generating the said output indicative of such a failure, and providing a user discernible indication in response to said output provided during said operation of providing the output, the user discernible indication indicative of the quality of the received signal in terms of the percentage of acceptable.