Patent ID: 8358600

Claim:
A method of transmitting a combined audio signal to at least one of a plurality of participants in a communication event, the method comprising: receiving an audio signal from each of said plurality of participants together with audio activity information associated with each of said received audio signals, each of said received audio signals comprising one or more data packets, and said audio activity information associated with each of said one or more data packets; temporarily storing, in a data storage, each of said received audio signals comprising the one or more data packets together with said audio activity information; analyzing a measure of audio activity for each received audio signal based on the audio activity information stored in the data storage and associated with each received audio signal, the measure of audio activity based on a signal-plus-noise to noise ratio of each received audio signal and enabling audio signals comprising audio activity to be compared; selecting a set of audio signals from said received audio signals based on the analyzed measure of audio activity for each received audio signal; decoding said set of audio signals; and combining said set of audio signals to generate said combined audio signal to be transmitted to said at least one of said plurality of participants.