JPH0416502Y2 - - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to a radio receiver, particularly a vehicle radio receiver having a digital electronic tuning tuner.

Improving operability is important for car radios, and for this reason receivers that mechanically select stations usually have a rotary dial as well as a push button for directly specifying the desired station. Electronic tuning types include a digital tuning type that specifies a broadcasting station (more specifically, its frequency), and a search tuning type that gradually increases and decreases the designated reception frequency and stops changing the frequency when the desired station is received. In such cases, it is difficult to tell whether the received broadcast wave is from the desired station without looking at the frequency display, which can interfere with driving. In the former type, a desired broadcasting station can be selected by pressing one of a plurality of pushbuttons, similar to the pushbutton type, but selection of the broadcasting station requires selection of the pushbutton.

For this reason, systems have been proposed in which the name of the selected broadcasting station is announced by voice. One example is the one disclosed in Utility Model Application Publication No. 55-142053, in which digital audio information representing the name of a broadcasting station is stored in advance in a memory device for each receiving frequency. The problem was that it required a large amount of memory.

That is, for example, "NHK Tokyo 1st Broadcasting", "NHK
Since digital audio information such as "Tokyo 2nd Broadcasting", "Chubu Nippon Broadcasting", "Nippon Broadcasting", etc. is stored for each received frequency, all of the audio information is It was necessary to remember.

Therefore, when memory capacity is taken into consideration, broadcasting station names must be memorized as abbreviations (for example, TBS), and if listeners do not know such abbreviations, it is pointless to announce the station name audibly. There was a problem of making it meaningful.

The purpose of the present invention is to solve these conventional problems by storing information specifying broadcasting station names as phrase digital audio information divided into phrases, and transmitting the information according to the received broadcasting frequency. By specifying addresses and sequentially reading out phrase digital audio information, it is possible to announce information specifying a broadcasting station by voice even with a small memory capacity. This will now be described in detail with reference to embodiments shown in the drawings.

FIG. 1 shows an embodiment of the invention. 10 is a digital electronic tuning tuner for a radio receiver, and although not shown in the figure, it has a high frequency amplification section, a local oscillation section, a frequency mixing section, an intermediate frequency amplifier, a tuning circuit with a built-in PLL, etc., as is well known. If the channel selection circuit is of the digital tuning type, it includes a memory that stores the broadcast frequency information of each broadcast station, a selection switch that specifies any desired one of the broadcast frequency information, and a memory that stores the selected broadcast frequency information and the local oscillation frequency (for details, It consists of a comparator that compares the local oscillation frequency (by frequency division, etc.), and a local oscillation frequency changing circuit that gradually increases or decreases the local oscillation frequency while the comparator indicates a mismatch.If it is a search channel selection type, the local oscillation frequency It consists of a changing circuit and a circuit that temporarily or permanently stops changing the local oscillation frequency when receiving broadcast waves using the output of the intermediate frequency amplification section. Reference numeral 12 denotes an editing circuit, for example, a microcomputer, which upon receiving the tuning completion signal _S1 from the intermediate frequency amplification stage or comparator of the tuner 10, edits the received broadcasting frequency data at that time, specifically local frequency data FD. Take in. 14 is a lookup table and ROM (read-only memory)
It stores each broadcast station name information and its broadcast frequency information. The name of the broadcasting station is NHK Tokyo 1st Broadcasting.
Chubu Nippon Broadcasting is relatively long, and adding words such as "desu" to announcements makes it even longer, so each phrase is memorized, such as "Chubu", "Nihon", and "Broadcast". The editing circuit 12 accesses the table 14 using the frequency data FD taken in from the tuner 10 as an address, and reads out broadcast station name information corresponding to the data for each phrase. For example, n, n in table 14
The above phrases "Chubu", "Japan", and "Broadcasting" are stored in the +1 and n+2 addresses (in detail, they are not words like these, but the memory addresses of the speech synthesis circuit described later), and the editing circuit 12 The table 14 is accessed by outputting the first address n of the frequency data FD and a predetermined number of subsequent addresses n+1 and n+2 in this example. Thus table 14
The broadcasting station name information SI read from the speech synthesis circuit 16
is input, and the synthesized voice output SVO is output.

The speech synthesis circuit 16 is of the Percoll type in this example, and includes a synthesis controller 18, an audio data memory 20, a signal processor 22, and a D/A converter 24. The memory 20 also consists of ROM,
Audio data is stored for each phrase. The broadcasting station name information SI is an address of the memory 20. For example, if the information SI is "Chubu", "Japan", or "Broadcasting", these become address signals for the storage area of the memory 20 that stores audio data corresponding to the phrases, and the data are output one after another. This is input to the signal processor 22 via the synthesis controller 18, and changes the frequency characteristics of the processor 22, which is a digital filter. Although not shown, an impulse or random noise is input to the processor, and when it passes through the filter 22 whose frequency characteristics have been changed according to the audio data, the output becomes a digital audio signal representing each phrase, and the output is sent to the D/A converter 24.
When it is converted to DA, it becomes an analog audio signal SVO. This is input to the low frequency amplification section of the radio receiver, and the sound is emitted from the speaker.

One broadcasting station does not necessarily correspond to one broadcasting frequency, and broadcasting stations in complex areas that are far apart may use the same broadcasting frequency. In such cases, the radio receiver will be equipped with a broadcast frequency specific to the area (the frequency of the pilot station).
It is preferable to provide a function to select a station, and when that broadcast frequency is received, it is determined that the area where the radio receiver is currently located is XX, and the name of the broadcast station in that area is announced. Regional recognition can easily be done manually. Reference numeral 26 is a switch for specifying the area, and by operating this switch, the area is specified. The area designation information is, for example, part of an address signal for accessing the lookup table 14.

Furthermore, there are many broadcast station names, and it is not economical to prepare all of them in the lookup table 14 and the audio data memory 20. Therefore, it is preferable to announce the station name of a representative broadcasting station, and announce the frequency of the others. In this case, the lookup table 14 and the audio data memory 20 are also prepared with audio information for phrases such as "500,""9+,""3," and "KHz." FIG. 2 shows the flow of the station name announcement process including such cases.

As explained above, according to the present invention, information specifying the name of a broadcasting station is stored as phrase digital audio information divided into phrases, and this phrase digital audio information is addressed according to the received broadcasting frequency. Since the information that specifies the broadcasting station can be announced by voice using a small memory capacity, it can be read out sequentially with other audio information such as ``NHK Tokyo 1st Broadcast'' or ``593 KHz.'' This is extremely suitable for announcing audio information that has overlapping phrases between the two. In addition, since the received frequency data and regional information are used to extract the audio data of the corresponding broadcasting station name, even if there are multiple broadcasting stations using the same frequency,
Information defining a broadcasting station can be announced by voice without error. In addition to announcing the station name only once,
It is also possible to have the process repeated a required number of times. Of course, the present invention may be applied not only to car radios but also to home radios. The name of the received broadcasting station can also be visually displayed in characters.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an embodiment of the present invention, and FIG. 2 is a flowchart showing procedures for announcing station names. In the drawing, 14 is a lookup table, 10 is a digital electronic tuning tuner, _S1 is a tuning completion signal, 1
2 is an editing circuit, and 16 is a speech synthesis circuit.

Claims (1)

[Scope of Claim for Utility Model Registration] A digital electronic tuning tuner, an audio data ROM that stores phrase digital audio information in which information defining broadcasting stations is divided into phrases, and predetermined phrases stored in the audio data ROM. a lookup table that stores addresses for specifying digital audio information; and upon receiving a tuning completion signal from the digital electronic tuning tuner, fetching received broadcast frequency data from the tuner, and using the frequency data and regional information. an editing circuit that accesses the look-up table by accessing the look-up table and sequentially reads out addresses of the audio data ROM corresponding to the frequency data and regional information in a predetermined order; and a voice synthesis circuit that sequentially reads out the corresponding phrase digital voice information from the voice data ROM and generates a synthesized voice output of information specifying the broadcast station corresponding to the received broadcast frequency data. radio receiver.