JP2007174210A - Wireless communication apparatus and method for enhancing voice quality - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a wireless communication system capable of improving degradation of voice quality resulting from problems arising in higher layers. <P>SOLUTION: Voice data contained in a received signal are converted into a voice signal consisting of an analog signal. When degradation in sound quality is detected by analyzing the waveform of the voice signal, communication with a communication partner is interrupted, and when the completion of the interruption of the communication is detected, reconnection is performed to enable sound communication with the communication partner again. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2007,JPO&INPIT

Description

  The present invention relates to a wireless communication apparatus used in a wireless communication system such as a mobile phone system and a wireless LAN, and a voice quality improvement method thereof.

  In recent communication systems, communication quality and busy communication, such as technology to secure the communication bandwidth required by users, error correction technology, or technology to reduce the influence of interference caused by other radio devices emitting radio waves, etc. Various techniques have been proposed for maintaining good voice quality.

For example, in Patent Document 1, it is determined whether or not a new path that can secure a communication band that satisfies the voice quality requested by the user can be set, and if it can be set, the path that has been used is disconnected. A method for switching to a new path is described.
JP 2000-69159 A

  In recent years, with the widespread use of the Internet, mobile phones, and the like, opportunities for transmitting and receiving important information such as personal information and information related to money have increased, and security of data transmitted and received via a communication system has become a problem. In particular, in a wireless communication system, since transmitted data can be intercepted by a third party, various encryption processes are performed on the transmitted data in order to improve security performance. However, in such a case, despite the communication in a good electric field, the encryption processing between the network side device (wireless base station, RNC (Radio Network Controller, etc.)) and the terminal device and the decryption for decrypting it are performed. Inconsistent processing may occur in rare cases, and the voice quality during a call may be significantly degraded.

  In network side devices and terminal devices (hereinafter collectively referred to as wireless communication devices) used in conventional wireless communication systems, the communication quality is only measured at layer 1 (Block Error Rate: BLER function, etc.). It was not possible to measure the deterioration of voice quality due to a problem occurring in the upper layer such as the mismatched state of encryption processing and decryption processing. Further, like the technique described in Patent Document 1 and the like, the conventional technique for improving the communication quality is a technique for securing a communication path band, an error correction technique, a technique for eliminating the influence of interference, or the like. Typically, no method has been proposed for solving the deterioration of voice quality caused by the above-mentioned upper layer problem. For this reason, there has been a problem that the state of poor voice quality continues forever.

  The present invention has been made in order to solve the problems of the conventional techniques as described above, and a wireless communication apparatus capable of improving the deterioration of voice quality due to a problem occurring in an upper layer and its An object is to provide a method for improving voice quality.

In order to achieve the above object, a wireless communication apparatus of the present invention is a wireless communication apparatus capable of voice communication, including a reception unit that receives a wireless signal and a transmission unit that transmits a wireless signal.
An analog converter that converts audio data contained in the received signal into an audio signal composed of an analog signal;
A voice analysis unit that analyzes a voice waveform of a voice signal output from the analog conversion unit;
When the analysis result of the voice analysis unit is received and the deterioration of the voice quality is detected based on the analysis result, the transmission unit is instructed to disconnect communication with the communication partner, and the completion of the communication disconnection is detected. A control unit that instructs reconnection to enable voice communication with the communication partner again,
Have

On the other hand, the speech quality improvement method for a wireless communication apparatus according to the present invention is a speech quality improvement method for a wireless communication apparatus capable of speech communication, including a reception unit that receives a wireless signal and a transmission unit that transmits a wireless signal. ,
Convert audio data contained in the received signal into an audio signal consisting of analog signals,
When analyzing the waveform of the audio signal and detecting a deterioration in audio quality, disconnect communication with the communication partner,
When the completion of the disconnection of the communication is detected, the connection is reestablished to enable voice communication with the communication partner again.

  In the wireless communication apparatus and the voice quality improvement method as described above, when the deterioration of the voice quality is detected by analyzing the waveform of the voice signal, the communication with the communication partner is disconnected and the completion of the disconnection of the communication is detected. In order to reconnect to enable voice communication with the communication partner again, for example, when the wireless communication device is a network-side device or a terminal device, these devices perform encryption processing and decryption processing again.

  According to the present invention, as a result of voice analysis, when it is determined that the voice quality is poor, the voice communication is temporarily disconnected and reconnected, so that the above-described causes of deterioration of the voice quality due to the upper layer problem are removed. Therefore, the deterioration of voice quality is improved.

  Next, the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings.

  FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a configuration example of a wireless communication apparatus of the present invention.

  As shown in FIG. 1, the wireless communication apparatus of the present invention includes an antenna 1, a duplexer 2, a receiving unit 3, an analog converting unit 4, a speaker 5, a voice analyzing unit 6, a control unit 7, a microphone 8, a digital converting unit 9, and a transmission. This is a configuration having the part 10.

  The Duplexer 2 supplies the radio signal received via the antenna 1 to the reception unit 3 and supplies the transmission signal output from the transmission unit 10 to the antenna 1. The receiving unit 3 demodulates the received radio signal, converts it into digital data, and extracts voice data. The analog conversion unit 4 converts the voice data (digital data) converted by the reception unit 3 into an analog signal. The speaker 5 outputs the sound converted into an analog signal by the analog conversion unit 4. The voice analysis unit 6 analyzes the voice converted into an analog signal by the analog processing unit 4 and outputs the analysis result.

  The microphone 8 collects user's voice to be transmitted. The digital converter 9 converts the voice (analog signal) collected by the microphone 8 into digital data. The transmission unit 10 modulates the audio data converted into digital data, and transmits the modulated radio signal from the antenna 1 via the Duplexer 2. The control unit 7 controls operations of the reception unit 3, the analog conversion unit 4, the digital conversion unit 9, and the transmission unit 10.

  For example, the antenna 1, the duplexer 2, the receiving unit 3, and the transmitting unit 10 may use a known configuration provided in a mobile phone, for example. The analog conversion unit 4 may be realized using a known D / A converter, and the digital conversion unit 9 may be realized using a known A / D converter. The voice analysis unit 6 and the control unit 7 may be realized by using, for example, a logic circuit, and include a CPU, a DSP, and a memory for storing a program, and the CPU or the DSP according to the program stored in the memory. You may implement | achieve the process of the audio | voice analysis part 6 and the control part 7 of this invention.

  In such a configuration, the wireless communication apparatus of the present invention demodulates a radio signal received by the antenna 1 by the receiving unit 3 and converts it into digital data, and then extracts voice data. The audio data extracted by the receiving unit 3 is converted into an analog signal by the analog converting unit 4. The sound signal output from the analog conversion unit 4 is analyzed by the sound analysis unit 6. The audio signal output from the analog conversion unit 4 is converted into audio by the speaker 5 and output.

  The voice analysis unit 6 analyzes the voice quality using a voice recognition technique and outputs the analysis result to the control unit 7. The control unit 7 detects the deterioration of the voice quality based on the analysis result of the voice analysis unit 6. Specifically, as a result of analyzing the speech waveform by the speech analysis unit 6, when a specific abnormal sound wave shape is detected or as a result of analyzing the spectrum of the speech waveform by the speech analysis unit 6, the power level of a specific frequency is abnormal. It is determined that the voice quality has deteriorated, for example.

  When the control unit 7 detects the deterioration of the voice quality, the control unit 7 instructs the transmission unit 10 to disconnect the voice communication. Upon receiving the voice communication disconnection request, the transmission unit 10 requests the communication partner wireless communication device (such as a wireless base station) to disconnect the communication via the duplexer 2 and the antenna 1. In this case, voice communication with the wireless communication device of the communication partner is stopped according to a predetermined disconnection process.

  When detecting the completion of communication disconnection with the communication partner wireless communication device, the control unit 7 instructs the transmission unit 10 to reconnect with the communication partner wireless communication device that has disconnected communication. Upon receiving the voice communication reconnection request, the transmission unit 10 requests the communication partner wireless device (such as a wireless base station) to reconnect the communication via the duplexer 2 and the antenna 1. In this case, after ensuring a communication path according to a predetermined process, voice communication with the wireless communication device of the communication partner becomes possible again.

  When the voice communication with the wireless communication device of the communication partner is temporarily disconnected in this way and then reconnection processing is performed, for example, when the wireless communication device is a network side device and a terminal device, those devices are encrypted or decrypted. Since the processing is re-executed, the state mismatch of the encryption processing and the decryption processing is resolved. That is, since the deterioration factor of the voice quality due to the problem of the upper layer described above is removed, the improvement of the voice quality can be expected.

  The procedure of these voice analysis processing and reconnection processing is shown in a flowchart as shown in FIG.

  As shown in FIG. 2, first, when the control unit 7 starts voice communication, the control unit 7 causes the voice analysis unit 6 to analyze the voice being communicated. And the analysis result of the audio | voice analysis part 6 is received, and it is determined from the analysis result of the audio | voice analysis part 6 whether the audio | voice quality is favorable or has deteriorated (step S11).

  When the analysis result of the voice analysis unit 6 indicates that the voice quality is deteriorated, the control unit 7 executes the communication path reconnection process described above (step S12), and proceeds to the process of step S13. If the analysis result of the voice analysis unit 6 indicates that the voice quality is good, the control unit 7 proceeds to the process of step S13 without performing any processing.

  In step S13, it is determined whether or not the voice communication is finished. If the voice communication is not finished, the process returns to step S11 and the processes in steps S11 to S13 are repeated. When the voice communication is finished, the processing by the wireless communication apparatus of the present invention is finished.

  According to the present invention, when it is determined that the voice quality is poor as a result of the voice analysis performed by the voice analysis unit 6, the voice communication is temporarily disconnected and reconnected, so that the voice quality caused by the above-described problem of the upper layer can be reduced. Since the deterioration factor is removed, the voice quality deterioration is improved.

  In addition, when it determines with audio | voice quality being bad and performs a reconnection process, in a terminal device, it will be in a silence state before being reconnected. Therefore, it is desirable that the control unit 7 informs the user of the wireless communication device that reconnection is being performed. For example, there is a method of playing a sound such as “currently connected” from the speaker 5 or a method of displaying “currently connected” on a display (not shown) of the wireless communication apparatus.

It is a block diagram which shows the example of 1 structure of the radio | wireless communication apparatus of this invention. It is a flowchart which shows the process sequence of the radio | wireless communication apparatus of this invention.

Explanation of symbols

1 Antenna 2 Duplexer
DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 3 Reception part 4 Analog conversion part 5 Speaker 6 Voice analysis part 7 Control part 8 Microphone 9 Digital conversion part 10 Transmission part

Claims (4)

A wireless communication apparatus capable of voice communication, including a reception unit that receives a radio signal and a transmission unit that transmits a radio signal,
An analog converter that converts audio data contained in the received signal into an audio signal composed of an analog signal;
A voice analysis unit that analyzes a voice waveform of a voice signal output from the analog conversion unit;
When the analysis result of the voice analysis unit is received and the deterioration of the voice quality is detected based on the analysis result, the transmission unit is instructed to disconnect communication with the communication partner, and the completion of the communication disconnection is detected. A control unit that instructs reconnection to enable voice communication with the communication partner again,
A wireless communication device. The voice analysis unit
Detects abnormal sound and excessive volume included in the audio signal output from the analog conversion unit,
The controller is
The wireless communication apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the sound quality is determined to be deteriorated when the sound signal includes abnormal sound or excessive sound volume. A method for improving voice quality of a wireless communication apparatus capable of voice communication, comprising a receiver for receiving a radio signal and a transmitter for transmitting a radio signal,
Convert audio data contained in the received signal into an audio signal consisting of analog signals,
When analyzing the waveform of the audio signal and detecting a deterioration in audio quality, disconnect communication with the communication partner,
A method for improving the voice quality of a wireless communication device, which is reconnected to detect voice communication with the communication partner again upon detecting completion of disconnection of the communication. Analyzing the waveform of the audio signal to detect abnormal noise and excessive volume contained in the audio signal,
The method for improving the voice quality of a wireless communication device according to claim 3, wherein the voice signal is judged to be deteriorated when an abnormal sound or an excessive volume is included in the voice signal.

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