Patent ID: 7606174

Claim:
A signal transmission apparatus connected to a network as one node among a plurality of nodes involved in the network which is provided with an audio signal transmission period for transmitting a plurality of channels of audio signals each transmission cycle and a control data transmission period for transmitting packets of control data of the plurality of the nodes each control cycle by using an idle time period other than the audio signal transmission period, said signal transmission apparatus comprising: a storage section that stores configuration information of said one node, the configuration information representing a setting state of said one node and being divided into a plurality of information blocks; a receiving section that receives a transmission order list from a node predetermined among the plurality of the nodes, the transmission order list indicating a predetermined transmission order; a transmitting section that transmits a packet of the control data according to the received transmission order list within the control data transmission period at a timing when a turn of said one node comes in the predetermined transmission order, the packet including at least an error checking code of the configuration information, the error checking code being a code data for checking an error of the configuration information; and a control section that determines whether the configuration information contains an information block to be transmitted at the timing, and operates in case that the configuration information is determined to contain the information block to be transmitted for controlling the transmitting section to transmit the packet containing only the information block and the error checking code, and otherwise operates in case that the configuration information is determined to contain no information block to be transmitted for controlling the transmitting section to transmit the packet containing only the error checking code.