Mobile telephone system call processing arrangement

US5278892A · kind A · utility

Assignee

• AT&T Bell Laboratories · US

Inventors

• Brian D. Bolliger · Winfield, US
• Talmage P. Bursh, Jr. · South Orange, US
• Kelvin Ho · San Francisco, US
• Alan Stuart Mulberg · Denver, US
• LaJeana N. Roberts · Bedminster, US
• Kenneth Frank Smolik · Naperville, US
• Douglas A. Spencer · Boulder, US
• Kenneth Wayne Strom · Naperville, US
• John S. Thompson · Oxnard, US

Key dates

• Filing date: Jan 21, 1993
• Grant date: Jan 11, 1994
• Expiry date: Jan 21, 2013

Classification

• Technology area (CPC H): Electricity
• CPC primary: H04W8/26
• WIPO field: Digital communication
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

A CDMA cellular radio-telephone system (FIG. 2) comprises a packet-switched communications network (202, 207, 201) that interconnects cells (base stations; 202) with each other and with the public telephone network (100). A unique combination of a static addressing plan that uses a different LAPD DLCI (302 in FIG. 7) for each unidirectional virtual call path, direct cell (202)-to-cell and cell-to-call-processing unit (264 in FIG. 5) control information exchanges, and packet-switching techniques that permit call traffic and control communications to share call paths and permit different call paths to share physical resources, is applied to call processing. This enables soft handoffs (FIGS. 27-29) to be handled in a manner transparent to the parties to the call and without significant involvement of system control elements (134 and 261 in FIG. 2) whose involvement would adversely impact the system's call-handling capacity. It also enables soft handoffs to occur without change of the call processing unit that is handling the call, so that a single call processing unit continues to handle the call from start to finish through even multiple soft handoffs.