JPH04313940A - Data communication equipment - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To inform it to a reception station in terms of protocol information when a call-waiting telephone comes to a tranmission station during communication. CONSTITUTION:A call-waiting telephone detection section 13 of a transmission station 10 detects the arrival of a line connection request from a 3rd station 12 with a call-waiting telephone signal sent from an exchange 9. Upon the detection of the call-waiting telephone signal, a protocol information generating section 14 generates protocol information including facsimile information representing the detection and sends the information to a reception station 11. The reception station 11 displays the arrival of the line connection request from the transmission station 10 onto a display device 16 by the protocol information. The operator of the reception station 11 locates a line interrpt and a cause to a distortion in data to be due to the reception of the call-waiting telephone based on the display.

Description

[Detailed description of the invention]

0001

[Field of Industrial Application] The present invention relates to a data communication device, and in particular improves the processing function when a data transmitting station receives a call from a third station during data communication between two stations. The present invention relates to a data communication device.

0002

2. Description of the Related Art There are communication systems that transmit and receive image data between facsimile machines and that transmit and receive data by connecting information processing apparatuses including personal computers through telephone lines. In such a communication system, if a data transmitting station receives a line connection request from a third station during data communication between two stations, the current communication is immediately interrupted and communication with the third station is interrupted. A choice is made to either start communication or to continue communicating with the first communication partner without responding to the call from the third station.

[0003] Among the above-mentioned options, communication systems in which the previous communication is interrupted are described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 63-67868 and Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 64-86660. In these communication methods, the line is disconnected and data communication is interrupted when an interrupt signal arrives from another source while data is being transmitted, or when an operator instructs the operator to perform arbitrary interrupt processing. . After executing a predetermined interrupt process, the data transmission is automatically restarted.

0004

The prior art described in the above-mentioned publication has the following problems.

[0005] In the above-mentioned prior art, a station receiving data unilaterally interrupts communication during reception without being informed of the situation by the other station, that is, the transmitting station. Therefore, the operator of the receiving station may be confused as to whether there is still data to be transmitted continuously or whether all data transmission has been completed.

[0006]Furthermore, when receiving a call waiting service in which a call waiting signal is sent from an exchange to notify that a line connection request has been made from a third station, noise may be introduced into the data being transmitted due to this call waiting signal. There is.

As a result, if the data continues to be transmitted without responding to the line connection request from the third station, for example, if the content of the data is image information, this image information may become distorted. Even if there is such a disturbance in the image information, the receiving station cannot identify the cause of the disturbance and has to worry about it unnecessarily.

[0008] As described above, in the conventional apparatus, when interrupting communication, no consideration was given to informing the other station of the reason for the interruption. Therefore, the operator of the other station is given unnecessary anxiety.

[0009] The purpose of the present invention is to solve the above problems,
To provide a data communication device capable of processing such as interrupting or continuing communication after notifying a current communication partner station of the incoming call from a third station during data transmission. It is in.

0010

[Means for Solving the Problems] In order to solve the above problems and achieve the objects, the present invention includes means for detecting a line connection request signal from another station that is received during data transmission, The first feature is that when a connection request signal is detected, the reception station is notified of this using protocol information.

A second feature of the present invention is that the receiving station is provided with display means for displaying that a line connection request from another station has been received by the transmitting station based on the protocol information. There is.

0012

[Operation] According to the present invention configured as described above, when detecting an interruption from a third station by a call waiting signal or the like, the transmitting station can notify the receiving station to that effect. At the receiving station, this notification can be displayed on the display means to notify the operator.

[0013]

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS The present invention will be described in detail below with reference to the drawings. FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing the hardware configuration of a facsimile machine according to an embodiment of the present invention. In the figure, image information of a document read by a reading device 1 is transmitted to an encoding/decoding unit 2.
The image information is coded and stored in the image information memory 3. The accumulated image information is sequentially sent to the next line via the network control unit (NCU) 4.

On the other hand, upon reception, the image information taken in from the line is temporarily stored in the image information memory 3, then decoded by the encoding/decoding section 2, and printed out by the printing device 5. The operation panel 6 includes a keyboard and a display device, and is used for inputting various instructions and displaying processing results.

Each of the above elements is controlled by the CPU 8 according to programs and management data stored in the management memory 7.

Next, the functions of this embodiment will be explained. FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the main functions of this embodiment. In the figure, an exchange 9 is connected to a facsimile machine 10 having the above-described configuration, a facsimile machine 11 serving as its partner station, and a third station 12. Needless to say, the exchange 9 is connected to many other data communication devices such as telephones and facsimile machines.

It is now assumed that image information is being transmitted to the facsimile machine 11 using the facsimile machine 10 as a transmitting station. Therefore, hereinafter, the facsimile device 10 will be referred to as a transmitting station, and the facsimile device 11 will be referred to as a receiving station. When a line connection request is received from the third station 12 to the transmitting station 10 during image communication between the transmitting station 10 and the receiving station 11, a call waiting signal is output from the exchange 9 to the transmitting station 10. The call waiting signal input to the network control unit 4 (NCU) is detected by the call waiting detection unit 13 as a call waiting signal.
It is recognized by In other words, the call waiting signal is 400H.
This is an intermittent signal of z. Therefore, the call waiting detection unit 13 is configured to monitor the spectrum of the input signal and determine that a call waiting signal has been received when the spectrum of the 400 Hz signal is much stronger than other signals and is intermittent at predetermined intervals. be done.

When the protocol information creation section 14 is supplied with the detection signal of the call waiting signal, it creates protocol information having a frame structure including a facsimile information field indicating that the call waiting signal has been received. This protocol information is received by the NCU 17 of the receiving station 11. The protocol information detection unit 18 of the receiving station 11 monitors the protocol information and detects the protocol information indicating that the transmitting station 10 has received the call waiting signal. The message storage unit 19 stores a message to notify the transmitting station that a call waiting has been received, for example, “
There is a call waiting at the transmitting station. Data for displaying characters such as "Image may be distorted" is stored in advance. Then, when protocol information is detected, characters are read from the message storage unit 19 in response to the detection signal. The data is read out to the display device 16, and a scheduled message is displayed based on this character data.

Further, in the transmitting station 10, after notifying that a call waiting signal has been detected based on the protocol information, the hooking generating section 15 outputs a hooking signal to the receiving station 11. This hooking signal causes N
The connection to the line in the CU 4 is instantaneously opened, and the exchange 9 detects this instantaneous opening and transfers the line from the receiving station 11 to the third
switch to the station 12 side.

[0020] When continuing communication with the receiving station 11 without responding to reception of the call waiting signal, the transmitting station 10 sends the next page of image information in the normal procedure without hooking after transmitting the protocol information. Send.

FIG. 3 shows an example of the frame structure of the protocol information. In this example, an HDL with well-known components is used.
The frame structure of C is used. This figure shows the structure of a multi-page signal MPS indicating the end of a page of image information. Information representing function information possessed by the transmitting station 10 is written in the facsimile information field FIF. This information includes a call waiting detection flag that notifies the receiving station 11 whether or not the transmitting station 10 receives a call waiting call. That is, in the figure, when the hatched bit is "1", it indicates that a call waiting signal has been received. The receiving station 11 monitors this bit in the protocol and determines whether or not to display on the display device 16 that "the transmitting station received a call waiting" message.

Next, the operation of this embodiment will be explained using a flowchart. First, the operation of the transmitting station 10 will be explained with reference to FIG. In the figure, transmission of image information is started in step S1, and in step S2 it is determined whether transmission of image information for one page has been completed.

[0023] When one page of image information is finished, the process advances to step S3, and it is determined whether a call waiting signal has been detected. If no call waiting signal is detected, the process advances to step S4, and it is determined whether or not all image information has been transmitted.

On the other hand, if it is determined in step S3 that a call waiting signal has been detected, the process proceeds to step S5, where a multi-page signal MPS having the above frame structure is created and sent.

Next, the operation of the receiving station 11 will be explained with reference to FIG. In the figure, in step S10, reception of image information is started, and in step S11, it is determined whether or not reception of one page of image information has been completed based on reception of a multi-page signal MPS sent from the transmitting station 10. .

[0026] When one page of image information is completed, the process proceeds to step S12, and it is determined whether the scheduled bit of the multi-page signal MPS is set to "1", that is, whether or not the call waiting detection flag is set. . If the flag is not set, the process advances to step S13, and it is determined whether or not all image information has been received.

On the other hand, if step S12 is affirmative, that is, if it is detected that a call waiting call has been received at the transmitting station 10,
Proceeding to step S14, characters scheduled to indicate the presence of a call waiting service are displayed on the display device 16.

FIG. 6 shows an example of protocol communication in the above image information transmission and reception. In Figure 6, first, CCITT
, T30, and transmits the image information PIX. When the transmission of one page of image information PIX is completed, the transmitting station 10 determines the presence or absence of a call waiting signal, and if a call waiting signal is detected, it sends out a multi-page signal MPS with a call waiting detection flag set.

[0029] The receiving station 11 receives the multi-page signal MP.
S is detected and a reception completion signal MCF is sent out. Transmitting station 1
0 resumes transmission of the next page of image information PIX in response to this reception completion signal MCF. When all the image information has been transmitted, the procedures of phases D and E are executed to end the communication.

Although the sequence diagram of FIG. 6 shows an example in which the transmitting station 10 continues the current communication even after detecting the call waiting signal, when interrupting the current communication in response to the call waiting signal, After sending out the page signal MPS, a line disconnection signal DCN is sent out subsequently.

It should be noted that the operation of the transmitting station 10 after detecting the call waiting signal, that is, the transmission of the multi-page signal MPS having the frame structure described above, is determined by inputting in advance from the operation panel 6 whether or not this is to be performed automatically. You may also set it in advance.

Similarly, at the receiving station 11, the operator can arbitrarily set whether or not to display a schedule indicating that there is a call waiting on the display device 16 based on the multi-page signal MPS, as in the transmitting station 10. Good too.

Furthermore, in this embodiment, the display device 16
The message with call waiting is now displayed. However, the present invention is not limited to such display means, and the object of the present invention of notifying the operator that a call waiting call has been received at the transmitting station 10 can also be achieved by lighting a scheduled lamp or sounding a buzzer. Can be done.

In this embodiment, an example of transmitting and receiving image information between facsimile machines has been explained, but it goes without saying that the same processing as in this embodiment can be performed in data communication between data communication devices using personal computers as terminal equipment. It is.

In this embodiment, the interrupt signal is 40
The explanation was given using a 0Hz call waiting signal as an example, but other signals such as the calling signal adopted by ATT in the United States,
In other words, in the case of a mixed signal of 480 Hz and 620 Hz, it goes without saying that the call waiting detection unit 13 may be configured accordingly.

[0036]

[Effects of the Invention] As is clear from the above explanation, according to the present invention, when an interruption occurs in a transmitting station during data communication,
This can be notified to the receiving station, and in response, the receiving station can display a schedule so that the operator can recognize that an interruption has occurred at the transmitting station.

As a result, at the receiving station, even if a disconnection of the line or disturbance of received data occurs, the cause can be identified, thereby eliminating the sense of uneasiness that the operator may feel.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing main functions of a control section according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing the hardware configuration of a facsimile device.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing a frame structure of protocol information.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing the operation of a transmitting station.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart showing the operation of the receiving station.

FIG. 6 is a sequence diagram showing the protocol of the embodiment.

[Explanation of symbols]

4, 17...NCU, 6...Operation panel, 8...CP
U, 9... Switchboard, 10... Transmitting station facsimile device, 11... Receiving station facsimile device, 12... Third station, 13... Call waiting detection section, 14... Protocol information creation section, 15... Hooking generation section,
16...Display device section

Claims (4)

[Claims] Claim 1: A means for receiving a line connection request signal from another station during data transmission and outputting a detection signal; 1. A data communication device comprising means for notifying a receiving station. 2. Data characterized by comprising means for receiving the protocol information, and display means for displaying that a line connection request has been received from another station to the transmitting station based on the protocol information. Communication device. 3. The data communication device according to claim 1, further comprising setting means for determining whether or not to operate means for notifying the detection of a line connection request signal using protocol information. 4. The transmitting station according to claim 1, further comprising a setting means for determining whether or not to operate a display means for displaying that a line connection request has been received from another station to the transmitting station based on the protocol information. 2. The data communication device according to 2.