2.4 kb/sec compressed domain teleconference bridge with universal transcoder

Advanced new technologies, such as cellular-telephone-quality ultra-low-rate speech coders, model domain transcoders, and compressed domain conferencing algorithms provide an opportunity to develop a compressed domain conference bridge system for use in secure, survivable military communications environments. The new conference bridge will allow seamless interoperability with diverse voice terminals and enable full-duplex teleconference operation. Unlike users of half-duplex systems, conferencing participants will be able to talk at the same time and hear the two most relevant simultaneous talkers over a single 2.4 kbit/s connection. This paper describes a system architecture that implements the features mentioned above. Compared to conventional multicast conferencing algorithms, the new system will consume a significantly smaller portion of the satellite resources; for N conference participants, conventional multicast requires N/sup 2/ channels, while the new system will use only 2N channels.