KR100661326B1 - Moblie phone for image data communication - Google Patents

Abstract

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a mobile communication terminal device capable of transmitting video information. In particular, the present invention relates to a mobile communication terminal that adds a camera function to a mobile communication terminal so that a user can transmit video information through a network. It is about. The present invention provides an image capturing apparatus comprising: imaging means for photographing an image of a subject to generate an image signal; A control unit which performs processing and control for voice call and data communication; And image signal processing means operating independently of the control unit and processing the image signals collected from the imaging means to generate digital image information. The present invention provides an image signal processing capability including an interface module for high-speed data communication to a camera-equipped mobile communication terminal to enable a camera-enabled mobile communication terminal as a web camera.

Mobile communication terminal with camera, video communication, serial interface

Description

Image information transmission mobile communication terminal device {Moblie phone for image data communication}             

1 is a block diagram of a conventional portable camera phone terminal

2 is a view showing the configuration of a mobile communication terminal for a web camera according to an embodiment of the present invention

3 is a view showing the configuration of a mobile communication terminal for a web camera according to another embodiment of the present invention

4 is a view showing a cable for performing data communication according to the present invention;

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a mobile communication terminal device capable of transmitting video information. In particular, the present invention relates to a mobile communication terminal that adds a camera function to a mobile communication terminal so that a user can transmit video information through a network. Relates to a device.

Recently, due to the rapid development of Internet communication, it has become possible to deliver messages through a computer. In addition, a computer and a computer are connected to each other, and a conversation or a message can be delivered while directly looking at a face. In order to talk or communicate with the other side of the face, a web camera is required to convert the video signal into an electrical signal.

On the other hand, in recent years, a camera phone that has given a camera function to a mobile communication terminal which is a mobile communication means has emerged and is becoming common. The camera phone is able to transmit and receive image data beyond the conventional transmission and reception of voice and data. Accordingly, the application area of the camera phone is expanding very widely.

1 is a block diagram of a conventional portable camera phone terminal. Referring to FIG. 1, a control unit (MPU: Micro-processor unit) 100 controls the overall operation of the mobile terminal, and performs processing and control for voice call and data communication. Description of processing and control of the conventional control unit 100 will be omitted.

The read only memory (ROM) 102 stores microcode and various reference data of a program for processing and controlling the controller 100, and stores an application program. Random Access Memory (RAM) 104 is a working memory of the controller 100. Temporary data generated during execution of various programs is stored. Flash ROM 106 stores various updatable storage data such as a phone book.

The keypad (key pad) 108 is a numeric key buttons of 0-9, menu button (menu), cancel button (clear), confirmation button, call button (TALK), end button (END), Internet access button, A plurality of function keys such as a navigation key, that is, a direction key, are provided, and key input data corresponding to a key pressed by the user is provided to the controller 100. The display 110 displays status information generated during the operation of the mobile communication terminal, a limited number of characters, a large amount of video and still images, and the like. The display unit 100 may use a color liquid crystal display (LCD).

The codec (Coder-Decoder) 112 connected to the control unit 100 and the speaker 116 and the microphone 114 connected to the codec 112 are voice input / output blocks used for phone calls and voice recording. . The codec 112 converts the PCM data provided from the controller 100 into an analog voice signal and transmits the same through the speaker 116 and converts the voice signal received through the microphone 114 into PCM data. Provided to the controller 100.

The RF unit 120 lowers the frequency of the radio frequency signal received through the antenna 118 to the baseband processor 122 and provides the baseband signal from the baseband processor 122 with the frequency. Up to transmit through the antenna 118. The baseband processor 122 processes a baseband signal transmitted and received between the RF unit 120 and the controller 100.

For example, in the case of transmission, channel coding and spreading of data to be transmitted are performed, and in the case of reception, the function of despreading and channel decoding of a received signal is performed. .

The camera 124 converts an optical signal incident to the lens into an electrical signal, converts the electrical signal into digital data (image data), and outputs the converted digital signal to the controller 100. For example, the camera 124 may use a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera.

The camera phone terminal according to the related art may store an image signal and transmit the stored image signal through a network. In addition, the video signal stored in the terminal can be transmitted to the PC using a cable (cable). As described above, in order to use the camera phone terminal as a web camera, image data of the camera must be transferred to the pc. At this time, the amount of data to be transmitted depends on the image format (format) displayed on the PC, but typically uses the CIF (352x144), QCIF (176x144) display format.

Recently, USB (Universal Serial Bus) technology has been used for many data transfers. USB combines "Universa", which means that all peripherals use the same connector, and "Serial," which means that peripherals are daisy-chained over serial transmission.

USB is an interface to solve the inconvenience caused by the slow speed and limited device connection of the existing external expansion ports (serial, parallel), which is a kind of serial port, and seven (IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Compaq, DEC, Northern Telecom, NEC). It was created after joint research by the company.

Compared to the external expansion ports used to connect only devices such as modems, printers, and scanners, USB has the advantage of connecting basic peripheral devices such as keyboard, monitor, mouse, printer, and modem all at once. In addition, when a new peripheral is connected, it can automatically connect up to 127 devices without rebooting or setup, and uses a 5V power supply for data rates up to 12Mbps. Not only is it fully supported with PnP, it's easy to install, and most motherboard chipsets include a USB controller, so no additional devices are required. Recently, USB chipsets and terminals are available on the motherboard, making it easier to use USB-related devices.

Intel, Compaq, NEC, and Microsoft, in the process of standardizing USB through the creation of a USBO agreement, announced the USB 1.0 specification in January 1996. At this time, the published standard was defined as a simple standard and was not a standard for practical use. Finally, in 1998, a new USB 1.1 specification was introduced, incorporating hardware and software technologies such as electrical transmission specifications and protocols.

With this practical standard, motherboard chipset makers such as Intel, VIA, SiS, and ALi announced that chipsets that support USB ports have begun to use USB ports on PCs as they are today. . The history of USB, which began in 1994, has received a good response, saying that it has been almost explosive since it has been popularized since 1999 after several revisions.

USB is mainly composed of three types: host, hub and device. The host is the center of all USB device connections, and in hardware terms it is called a USB controller. The hub allows multiple USB devices to use the same output from the USB controller. The hub on the host controller is called the root hub, and the external USB hub connects many USB devices to the PC.

With the advent of USB 2.0, the maximum transfer rate has improved to 480Mbps, but the bus speed and the speed at which the actual device transfers data will vary. The USB host has four data transfer modes (isochronous, interrupt, bulk, and control) to manage the bandwidth of the pipes used by different devices.

The baud rate depends largely on how busy the bus is sending data (Busy, Idle) and which of the four transmission modes is being used. The best state is bulk fast transfer mode, which can transfer data at 53MB per second using approximately 99% of bandwidth.

However, in the related art, when a data interface is transmitted using UART (9600bps) communication, there is a problem in that a data transmission rate is not low in order to transmit at least 30 frames for transmission without annoyance.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made to solve the above-mentioned problems. In order to use the camera-mounted mobile communication terminal as a web camera, the present invention provides a video signal processing capability including an interface module for high-speed data communication. It aims to enable efficient transmission and reception of video information.

One embodiment of the present invention for achieving this object is an image pickup means for generating an image signal by imaging the image of the subject; A control unit which performs processing and control for voice call and data communication; And image signal processing means operating independently of the control unit and processing the image signals collected from the imaging means to generate digital image information.

Another embodiment of the present invention for achieving this object is an image pickup means for generating an image signal by imaging the image of the subject; A video signal controller for compressing the image signals collected from the imaging means to generate digital image information; And an interface module for transmitting the generated digital image information to an external master system.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION A detailed description of preferred embodiments of the present invention will now be described with reference to the accompanying drawings. In the following description of the present invention, if it is determined that a detailed description of a related known function or configuration may unnecessarily obscure the subject matter of the present invention, the detailed description thereof will be omitted. In addition, terms to be described below are terms defined in consideration of functions in the present invention, which may vary according to user intention or custom, and the definitions should be made based on the contents throughout the present specification.

Mobile communication terminal according to the present invention is provided with a serial communication interface means such as RS-232 for data transmission with PC (PC), and on the premise that the USB interface means in particular included.

On the other hand, in the USB communication method, a master (PC) must exist to perform an interface, and a slave, that is, a mobile communication terminal, can operate only under the control of the master. Accordingly, the present invention is to provide a video signal control unit operating as a USB slave to interface with a PC operating as a master during the current USB communication, the conventional control unit to perform an independent mobile communication terminal function By doing so, it is possible to reduce the load on the terminal.

That is, the terminal is used as a memory for storing an image, or as a device for power supply, image display, image transmission, and the like, and the portion that affects the function of the image signal is performed by the image signal controller.

2 is a view showing the configuration of a mobile communication terminal for a web camera according to an embodiment of the present invention.

As described with reference to FIG. 1, a microprocessor unit (MPU) 200 controls the overall operation of the mobile terminal and performs processing and control for voice call and data communication. The memory unit 208 stores microcodes and various reference data of programs for processing and control of the control unit 200, stores application programs, or stores temporary data generated during various program executions, and stores various data. Save it.

The keypad 202 includes a plurality of function keys, and provides key input data corresponding to a key pressed by the user to the controller 200. The speaker 204 and the microphone 206 connected to the control unit 200 are voice input / output blocks used for phone calls and voice recording.

The RF module unit 216 reduces the frequency of the radio frequency signal received through the antenna 218 to allow the control unit 200 to process the baseband, and raises the processed baseband signal by frequency. Transmit via antenna 218. Baseband processing is performed by channel coding and spreading data to be transmitted in the case of transmission, and despreading and channel decoding the received signal in the case of reception. The camera 212 converts an optical signal incident to the lens into an electrical signal, converts the electrical signal into digital data (image data), and outputs the converted digital signal to the controller 200.

On the other hand, the present invention is provided with a separate video signal controller 210 dedicated to process the video signal in addition to the components for performing the conventional mobile communication function as described above to reduce the load of the controller. .

In this case, the image signal controller 210 includes a digital signal processor and an interface module. The digital signal processing unit (DSP) processes the received digital signal according to the set resolution and classifies it into a luminance and chroma signal, and compresses the received digital signal according to the set compression ratio to generate compressed digital image information.

The size of the image information stored in the memory unit 208 depends on the resolution and the compression rate. Resolution indicates the degree to which the subject can be accurately reproduced on a television or a photograph, and can be divided into horizontal resolution and vertical resolution. In the case of a digital camera, an image is divided into as many unit areas corresponding to the horizontal resolution and the vertical resolution, and the image is converted into an image signal value corresponding to each unit area (pixel, pixel) and stored.

The compression process in the digital signal processing unit in the image signal controller 210 may be configured in various ways, either hardware or software. As a compression standard for color still images, JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) ) Can be used in many different resolutions, from low resolution displays to high resolution printing systems.

As an example of the JPEG image compression processing method using a lossy irreversible coding method based on a Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT), an input digital image signal may be converted into an 8 × 8 pixel image. After decomposition into blocks, the decomposed video signals are inputted one block at a time, and a discrete cosine transform operation is performed on a block basis, the discrete cosine transformed video signals are quantized, and the quantized data is encoded using a Hoffman encoder. To generate a compressed image.

The digital signal processor in the image signal controller 210 inputs the generated digital image signal to an LCD (not shown separately), thereby displaying an image on the LCD.

On the other hand, the digital signal processing unit in the video signal controller 210 may convert a digital video signal into an interface module in the video signal controller 210 such as a universal serial bus interface (UI) or an RS232C interface and an interface terminal 214 that is a connection portion thereof. Can be transmitted via serial communication.

The interface module in the image signal controller 210 processes the image signals collected from the camera to enable mutual communication with an external master system 220 through the interface terminal 214, and only supports a wired interface such as USB. Rather, a short-range wireless interface such as Bluetooth may be implemented. In addition, SDIO technology can be adopted and applied. In the operation of the various digital signal processing units as described above, the digital signal processing unit is operated using a clock signal of a system internal clock clock.

Data collected and processed by the digital signal processor in the image signal controller 210 from the camera module 212 is typically parallel data. For example, 8-bit form may be used. The digital signal processing unit in the image signal controller 210 converts the collected image data into a compressed signal such as J-pec and transmits it to the outside through the interface module. In this case, the compressed video signal may be directly connected to the external master system 220, that is, the pc, without transmitting the control unit 200 inside the camera, and may transmit data.

On the other hand, the master system 220 should be provided with a driver dedicated to the image signal processing, which is a separate drive program for the interface with the image signal controller 210. The driver is a dedicated driver that enables mutual communication between the pc 220 and an interface module for processing image signals collected from a camera. The driver may not only support a wired interface such as USB but also perform a short range wireless interface such as Bluetooth. have. The image signal controller 210 recognizes this when the USB port is connected after converting the input image signal, and transmits the compressed image signal to the PC 220.

As described above, the PC 220 drives a driver dedicated to image signal processing corresponding to the interface module in the image signal controller 210. Therefore, when the USB port is connected between the image signal controller 210 and the PC 220 through the interface terminal 214, the above-described image information data is transmitted by the conventional USB protocol.

That is, when the USB port is connected between the PC 220 and the video signal controller 210, the video signal controller 210 recognizes an interrupter, which is an external control signal transmitted from the PC 220, to perform USB communication. Ready to do it. Therefore, a separate switch selection is not required for switching to the web cam mode at this time.

Accordingly, the image signal controller 210 collects image data from the camera which has been switched to the web cam mode, and processes the image data using a J-pack. The processed image data is controlled by an external master system through an interface module of the image signal controller 210. For example, it is possible to perform data communication with a pc.

3 is a view showing the configuration of a mobile communication terminal for a web camera according to another embodiment of the present invention, Figure 4 is a view showing a cable for performing data communication according to the present invention, is connected to the interface terminal external master system Indicates a cable to perform data communication with.

3 illustrates a case in which the image signal controller 210 and the controller 200 illustrated in FIG. 2 are formed of one component. That is, as described in FIG. 2, the video signal controller 210 and the controller 200 may be independently implemented to transmit image information with an external master system, but in FIG. 3, the controller 300 may be integrated into one. It is implemented to be processed in batch.

Therefore, the DSP function for converting and compressing image information and the MPU function for processing normal communication data are implemented to be collectively processed in the controller 300. In addition, it should be noted that the interface module capable of transmitting high-speed image information is also performed by the controller 300 according to the present invention.

As shown in FIG. 3, in the case of another embodiment of the present invention, the number of components is reduced, which is advantageous for implementing a small size, but has a disadvantage in that the load of the controller 300 is increased. The RF module 316, the camera 310, the interface terminal 312, the memory 308, the keypad 302, the speaker 304, the microphone 306, and the antenna 318, which are other components except the control unit, may be used. And the function and role of the external master system PC 314 is the same as described above and a detailed description thereof will be omitted.

Meanwhile, in the case of the present invention, the wired serial communication is mainly described as an example. However, in recent years, the present invention can be applied to wireless short-range communication, such as Bluetooth, which is widely used, and also applicable to SDIO. As described above.

The technical spirit of the present invention has been described above with reference to the accompanying drawings, but this is only illustrative of the preferred embodiments of the present invention and not intended to limit the present invention. In addition, it is obvious that any person skilled in the art can make various modifications and imitations without departing from the scope of the technical idea of the present invention.

As described above, in order to use the camera terminal as a web camera, the present invention provides the camera terminal with an image signal processing capability including an interface module for high-speed data communication, thereby enabling efficient transmission and reception of image information.

Claims (11)

A mobile communication terminal device connected to an external system to transmit image information, Imaging means for imaging an image of a subject to generate an image signal; Image signal processing means for processing the image signal collected from the image pickup means to generate digital image information, and transmitting the generated digital image information to the external system when a control signal is received from an external system; And And control means for performing control for voice call and data communication independently of the video signal processing means. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the video signal processing means comprises: signal processing means for compressing the collected image signals to generate digital video information; And an interface module for transmitting the generated digital image information to the external system when a control signal is received from the external system. delete The mobile communication terminal device of claim 2, wherein the interface module transmits the generated digital image information to the external system independently of the control means when a control signal is received from the external system. delete The mobile communication terminal device according to claim 4, wherein the interface module is a wired communication interface driver for converting and converting parallel data of the signal processing means into serial data. The mobile communication terminal of claim 4, wherein the interface module is a driver for SDIO communication. The mobile communication terminal of claim 4, wherein the interface module is a driver for Bluetooth communication. A mobile communication terminal device connected to an external system to transmit image information, Imaging means for imaging an image of a subject to generate an image signal; A video signal processor for compressing the image signals collected from the imaging means to generate digital image information; And And an interface module for transmitting the generated digital image information to the external system when a control signal is received from an external system. The mobile communication terminal of claim 9, wherein the interface module is a driver for Bluetooth communication. The mobile communication terminal device according to claim 9, wherein the interface module is a wired communication interface driver for converting and converting parallel data of the video signal processing unit into serial data.

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