Chris Curtis

US Patent:

20030115515, Jun 19, 2003

Filed:

Dec 13, 2001

Appl. No.:

10/022463

Inventors:

Chris Curtis - Scottsdale AZ, US
Joseph Marino - Prescott AZ, US
Bruce Fette - Mesa AZ, US

International Classification:

G01R031/28

US Classification:

714/712000

Abstract:

In a digital channel of a digital wireless communication system including at least one mobile station, at least one base transceiver station in communication with the mobile station, a transcoder configured to provide a signal conversion between vocoder frames and pulse code modulation, and a mobile switching center for interconnecting the digital wireless communication system to a public switched telephone network, a method and apparatus for determining a fault in the digital channel is disclosed. The method includes generating a first set of vocoder input parameters from a speech input signal, and generating a second set of vocoder input parameters from an output signal substantially equivalent to the speech input signal as it is received at a mobile station via the digital channel. The method further includes calculating a metric based on the first and the second set of vocoder input parameters, and subsequently determining a fault in the digital channel using the metric.