JPH04207826A - Pager - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To easily confirm all contents of such a complicated sentence that couldn't be displayed in a batch by hearing the sentence in voices and without looking at the display of the sentence by adding a voice synthesizing function and synthesizing the contents of the sentence received from a center side in voices. CONSTITUTION:When a radio wave is transmitted from a radio call peripheral base station 5, all pagers 6 included in the relevant area receive the radio wave. A control part 26 extracts a device number out of the digital data and compares it with the equipment number proper to the pager 6 and stored in a ROM 16. When the coincidence is obtained between both equipment numbers, the part of the text data on a message sentence is extracted out of the digital data and stored in a message RAM 14. A person carrying a pager 6 can recognize a message transmitted from the center side when a light emitting diode LED is turned on and the singing is outputted and then pushes a switch 12 to select the voice output. Thus the part 26 reads a massage text out of the RAM 14 and synthesizes the voices by a prescribed rule. Then the voices are outputted through a speaker 19.

Description

[Detailed Description of the Invention] [Purpose of the Invention (Field of Industrial Application) The present invention is a so-called pager that outputs a synthesized voice with a display and a voice synthesis function when contacting the person carrying the phone. Regarding a pager called.

(Prior Art) Recently, pagers called so-called pagers have been widely used. A pager is a type of mobile communication that allows you to easily call a person carrying a pager using a regular telephone.

The calling range can be anywhere as long as the transmitted radio waves can reach.For example, if a salesman is busy moving from place to place and carries a pager, the caller can call from the head office without having to inform the headquarters/department of his/her destination. It is very convenient because you can call it using a regular telephone when you need it.

By the way, the general method for calling a pager is to use a beeping sound. After hearing this sound, the owner of the pager uses a nearby telephone to make a call.
You can contact the headquarters.

However, in the case of a simple phone call, the content of the message cannot be known unless the call is made to the headquarters. Furthermore, if there are multiple parties to call the pager, the pager may not know who to contact even if the pager is called. Therefore, recently, pagers equipped with a display have been developed.

Having a display allows you to communicate simple matters.

For example, ``Contact my family'' or ``I'll leave it to Mr. Yamada.''

Alternatively, there is a method of encrypting the contents using numbers. For example, "1...contact home", "2...contact office", etc.

However, pagers are small in size to make them convenient to carry, have a limited number of characters that can be displayed, and can only display simple information. Therefore, if there is a large amount of content to be displayed, it is necessary to provide a key and press the second key to scroll the display because the content cannot be displayed at the - degree. However, it is very troublesome to hold a pager in hand when you are out and about, and to check the contents by operating keys while looking at the display.

Therefore, a method of uttering voice to communicate the business may be considered. To achieve this method, when contacting the pager by phone from the headquarters, the message is spoken aloud, and the voice is converted into digital voice after passing through the telephone line.
It will be delivered to the designated pager via radio waves. On the pager side, this digital audio is converted to analog audio and output as audio from a speaker.

However, when audio is converted into digital data, the amount of information becomes extremely large. For example, even for 2 seconds of audio, the speed is 64kbps.
Even if PCM compression is performed, the amount of information will be 16 bytes. Pagers are designed to reduce the amount of information transmitted as radio waves as much as possible so that many people can use the pager at the same time, thereby making effective use of limited radio waves.

Therefore, when transmitting voice as radio waves, the amount of information becomes extremely large using common data compression methods, which poses a problem.

(Problems to be Solved by the Invention) As described above, conventionally, the display attached to a pager is small in size and the number of characters that can be displayed is small. Therefore, if the text sent from the headquarters is complex and has a large number of characters, it cannot be displayed all at once, and it is necessary to display it in multiple parts. Therefore, it was necessary to scroll when displaying, which was very troublesome when using it. Furthermore, if an attempt was made to realize a system for outputting audio, the amount of information would increase when the audio was digitized, and there would be problems in terms of effective use of radio waves, making it difficult to implement.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide a pager that makes it possible to easily check the entire contents, even if the text sent from the headquarters is complex and cannot be displayed at once.

[Configuration of the Invention (Means for Solving the Problem) A pager according to the first invention includes a receiving means for receiving character string information sent from a sender, and a receiving means for receiving character string information received by the receiving means. The apparatus includes a speech synthesis means for generating synthesized speech by analysis, and an output means for outputting the synthesized speech generated by the speech synthesis means.

A pager according to a second aspect of the invention includes a receiving means for receiving a phonetic symbol string and prosody information sent from a sender, and a speech synthesizing means for generating synthesized speech from the phonetic symbol string and prosody information received by the receiving means. and an output means for outputting the synthesized speech generated by the speech synthesis means.

(Function) According to the pager according to the first invention, a speech synthesis function is added and the content of the text sent from the headquarters is uttered by speech synthesis processing, so that it is possible to display complex text that cannot be displayed at once. By listening to the audio, even if the text is simple, you can easily check the entire content without looking at the display. The text sent from the headquarters is digitized text information, so the amount of information is very small.
It is no different from the amount of information required when displaying.
There is no problem in terms of radio wave usage efficiency.

According to the pager according to the second invention, the same effects as the first invention can be obtained, and the hardware does not require high-level processing for analyzing character string information like the first invention. becomes significantly easier.

(Example) Hereinafter, an example of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing the entire pager system according to the present invention. In other words, 1 is a telephone installed at the headquarters, 2 is a personal computer (hereinafter simply referred to as a personal computer) also installed at the headquarters, 3 is a public line telephone network, and 4 is a pager dedicated to calling processing. 5. Peripheral base station equipment for radio calling; . . . are peripheral base stations for radio calls, which are arranged in different regions according to the range of radio waves. 6°... is a pager according to the present invention.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the pager 6 in detail.

That is, 6a is a receiving antenna, which is mounted inside the main body of the pager 6 so that the antenna part does not get in the way when carrying the pager. 7 is a high frequency receiving section, for example 2
FSK (Freque
ency 5hift Keying) modulation scheme is commonly used. Reference numeral 8 denotes a signal detection unit that performs wave detection from a high frequency signal to detect digital data. Reference numerals 9 to 12 denote various switches, each of which is provided on the outside of the main body of the pager 6.

13 is a display unit that displays messages (text) received from the headquarters, 14 is a message RAM (random φ access φ memory) that temporarily stores the messages received from the headquarters in the form of text information, and 15 is a A light emitting drive unit that drives a light emitting diode LED that blinks when there is a contact from the head office, 16 is a ROM (read only memory) that stores a device number that distinguishes this pager 6, and 17 is a read only memory that stores a device number that distinguishes this pager 6. 18 is a power amplifier that amplifies the audio signal or the sound signal; and 19 is a speaker that outputs audio.

20 is a character string analysis unit that analyzes text information sent from the headquarters, 21 is an accent dictionary that stores access point information at the clause or word level, and 22 is a speech segment memory, which is necessary for speech rule synthesis. It stores speech segment data as the minimum unit of speech. Reference numeral 23 denotes a phoneme parameter generation unit that generates a phoneme parameter string from the phoneme symbol string generated by the character string analysis unit 20 by referring to the speech unit memory 22. 24 is a prosodic parameter generation unit that generates a prosodic parameter string based on the prosodic information generated by the character string analysis unit 20. Reference numeral 25 denotes a speech synthesis section that synthesizes speech according to the phonetic parameter string and the prosodic parameter string.

FIG. 3 schematically shows the appearance of the pager 6. The display section 13 and the speaker 19 are provided on the surface of the main body 30.
The switches 9 to 12 are also provided on one side of the main body 30.

Next, the operation in such a configuration will be explained.

First, in FIG. 2, the process begins by calling the pager 6 using the telephone 1 at the headquarters. The calling telephone 1 is generally a so-called button telephone. A specific telephone number is assigned to the pager 6 to be called. Further, this telephone number is specified in an area where the user can carry the pager 6 and receive messages.

Here, as the telephone 1, an ordinary button telephone is sufficient just for calling the pager 6. but,
In the method of sending a message as in the present invention, it is necessary to input kana characters or alpha-het characters, and with ordinary butshuphone telephones that only allow numbers to be input, as shown in Figure 4, kana characters or It is very time-consuming as it is necessary to associate alphabetic characters with two-digit numbers and press the number keys to input them.

Another method is to code frequently used sentences using numbers. For example, make a correspondence between the synopsis and the code, such as ``Contact the office''...01 ``Contact your home'' ..........02 ``Contact the manager''``03'' This is the way to keep it. However, this method is limited to the content of communications or simple sentences; it is not possible to send complex sentences.

Therefore, in this embodiment, the personal computer 2 is used to send complicated sentences to the pager 6. The personal computer 2 is connected to a telephone line via a modem, similar to general personal computer communication. The personal computer 2 is running a program that allows the user to key in a telephone number to call the pager 6 and then key in a message.

The present invention may be applied to the method described above. In short, any method that can call the designated pager 6 and send a complex sentence may be used. Here, if the telephone number is designated as a pager call, the radio paging central base station device 4 is called, and by checking the telephone number, the corresponding calling area is determined. Then, the designated wireless calling peripheral base station 5 is called, and radio waves are transmitted from there to the designated area.

When a radio wave is transmitted from the wireless paging peripheral base station 5, all pagers 6 within the area receive the radio wave. The received radio waves pass through the antenna 6a, are received by the high frequency receiver 7, are converted into digital data by the signal detector 8, and are input to the controller 26. Here, the above digital data is
It consists of a device number specifying each pager and a text message.

The control unit 26 extracts the device number from the digital data and compares it with the pager-specific device number stored in the ROM 16 to see if they match. If they do not match, it is not the specified pager, and the process ends at this point. If they match, it is the designated pager, and the control unit 26 extracts the text data portion of the message from the digital data and stores it in the message RAM 14 (see FIG. 5).

Further, when the control unit 26 receives the radio wave, the control unit 26 controls the light emission driving unit 1
5 to light up the light emitting diode LED, and also drive the sound generating section 17.

As a result, the sound generating section 17 generates a sound (beep) signal, this sound signal is amplified by the power amplifier 18, and the sound is output from the speaker 19. The person carrying the pager 6 knows that there has been a contact from the headquarters when the light emitting diode LED turns on and a sound is output.

The message RAM 14 contains, as shown in FIG.
The message text is stored in the order in which it is entered. Next, the control unit 26 reads the message text from the message RAM 14. In this case, the newest message text stored last is read out and sent to the display section 13.

The display unit 13 displays the contents of the message text.

Here, when the switch 12 for selecting audio output is pressed, the control unit 26 again reads the message text from the message RAM 14 and sends it to the character string analysis unit 20. The character string analysis section 20 analyzes the message text by referring to the accent dictionary 21, and obtains a phonetic symbol string and prosody information. Then, the phonological parameter generation unit 2
3 uses the phoneme symbol string as input information and refers to the speech segment memory 22 to generate a phoneme parameter string to be used in the rule synthesis of speech. In addition, the prosodic parameter generation unit 24 uses the prosodic information as input information to generate a prosodic parameter sequence to be used in the rule synthesis of speech.

The phonetic parameter string and prosodic parameter string thus generated are each sent to the speech synthesis section 25. The speech synthesis unit 25 generates a sound source and performs digital filtering processing that approximates its vocal tract characteristics according to the input phonetic parameter string and prosodic parameter string, and performs speech synthesis according to predetermined rules. A synthesized voice indicated by the input character string is generated and the voice signal is sent to the power amplifier 18. The power amplifier 18 amplifies the input audio signal and drives the speaker 19.
Audio is output from the speaker 19.

Note that the switch 9 serves as both a power switch and a volume selector switch; when pressed for the first time, the power is turned on; when pressed further, the volume output from the speaker 19 increases; each time the switch is pressed, the volume increases. It's becoming. Then, when the volume reaches maximum, the next press will turn off the power.

Switch 10 is a switch for selecting a message.
Each time this switch 10 is pressed, the oldest message is selected in reverse order from the newest message received by the pager 6, and its contents are displayed. Furthermore, when the switch 12 for selecting audio output is pressed, the content of the message selected by the switch 10 is output in audio.

The switch 11 is used when the contents of the message currently displayed on the display section 13 cannot be displayed in its entirety.
When you press , the display on the display section 13 scrolls so that you can check all the contents.

In this way, according to the above embodiment, even if the text is sent from the headquarters or is a complex text that cannot be displayed at once,
You can easily check all the contents. That is, conventional pagers cannot display complex texts sent from the headquarters at once, and the text must be scrolled to display it, which is troublesome. However, by adding a speech synthesis function to the pager and uttering the content of the text through speech synthesis processing, it becomes possible to easily check the entire content, even if the text is complex and cannot be displayed at once. The amount of information sent from the headquarters is very small because it is converted into text, and it is no different from the amount of information required for conventional display, and the efficiency of radio wave use is limited. Not a problem.

In the above embodiment, the character string analysis section 20 mainly analyzes general sentences, and therefore requires very sophisticated analysis processing such as Japanese syntax analysis.

Therefore, as shown in FIG. 6, a configuration may be considered in which the character string analysis section 20 and the accent dictionary 21 are deleted and text information including phonetic symbol strings and prosody information is sent from the headquarters side. In Figure 6, the message RA Ml
The contents stored in 4 are message text, phonetic symbol strings, and prosody information, as shown in FIG. The message text is similar to the message text described above, and here is sent to the display section 13 and used for display purposes only. The phonetic symbol string and prosody information are also the same as those described above. This information is then stored on PC 2 at the headquarters.
is generated and sent to the pager 6, and does not require sophisticated character string analysis processing on the pager 6 side, thus simplifying the hardware.

In this case, the control unit 26 reads the phonetic symbol string and prosody information from the message RAM 14. Then, the phonetic symbol string is sent to the phonetic parameter generation section 23, and the prosody information is sent to the prosodic parameter generation section 24. The phoneme parameter generation unit 23 receives the phoneme symbol string as input information and receives 1. By referring to the speech unit memory 22, a phoneme parameter string to be used for the rule synthesis of speech is generated. In addition, the prosodic parameter generation unit 24 uses the prosodic information as input information to generate a prosodic parameter sequence to be used in the rule synthesis of speech.

Then, the speech synthesis unit 25 generates a sound source and performs digital filtering processing that approximates its vocal tract characteristics based on the above phonetic parameter string and prosodic parameter string, and performs speech synthesis according to predetermined rules. A synthesized voice indicated by the input character string is generated, and the voice signal is sent to the power amplifier 18. The power amplifier 18 amplifies the input audio signal and drives one speaker, so that audio is output from the speaker 19.

As described above, according to the above embodiment, the same effects as in the above embodiment can be obtained, and there is no need for sophisticated analysis processing for analyzing character string information as in the above embodiment.
The hardware becomes significantly simpler, simplifying the configuration and lowering costs.

[Effects of the Invention] As detailed above, according to the present invention, even if the text is sent from the headquarters or is complex and cannot be displayed at once, it is possible to simply check whether the entire content is included in the section. A pager can be provided.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

1 to 5 are for explaining one embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the configuration of a pager in detail, and FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing the entire configuration of the pager system according to the present invention. 3 is a perspective view showing the appearance of the pager, FIG. 4 is a diagram showing kana characters and alphabetic characters expressed by two-digit numbers, and FIG. 5 is a diagram showing the contents of the message RAM. , FIG. 6 is a block diagram showing in detail the configuration of a pager in another embodiment of the present invention,
FIG. 7 is a diagram showing the contents of the message RAM in another embodiment of the present invention. 1...Telephone, 2...PC, 3...Telephone network, 4
... Radio paging central base station device, 5... Radio paging peripheral base station, 6... Pager, 6a... Antenna, 7...
- High frequency receiving section, 8...Signal detection section, 13...Display section, 14...Mesosage RANI, 15..Light emission drive section, 16.ROM, 17..Sound generation section, 18..Power amplifier , 19...Speaker, 20...Character string analysis section,
21...Accent dictionary, 22...Speech segment memory,
23... Phonological parameter generation section, 24... Prosodic parameter generation section, 25... Speech synthesis section. Applicant's agent Patent attorney Takehiko Suzue No. 3 Figure 114 Leap No. 50 Figure 7

Claims (2)

[Claims] (1) A receiving means for receiving character string information sent from a sender; a speech synthesizing means for generating synthesized speech by analyzing the character string information received by this receiving means; and a speech synthesizer for generating synthesized speech by this speech synthesizing means. and output means for outputting synthesized speech. (2) Receiving means for receiving the phonetic symbol string and prosodic information sent from the source; speech synthesizing means for generating synthesized speech from the phonetic symbol string and prosodic information received by the receiving means; and this speech synthesizing means and an output means for outputting synthesized speech generated by the pager.