Patent · US Expired

Passive system and method for measuring and monitoring the quality of service in a communications network

US7376132B2 · kind B2 · utility

20Cited by
16References
36Claims
0Family size

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Inventor

Key dates

Filing dateAug 12, 2003
Grant dateMay 20, 2008
Priority date
Expiry dateMar 23, 2026

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
  • CPC primaryH04L43/16
  • WIPO fieldDigital communication
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

In accordance with the present invention, a portion of a received media stream is copied from a data network without interfering with the flow of the data in the network. A known test signal is then substituted for the information contained in the copied portion of the media stream to prepare a pseudo-media stream. The known test signal is encoded, and packetized if necessary, using the same methods used for the received media stream. A pseudo-media signal is then recovered from the pseudo-media stream using the same depacketizing and decoding methods to be used on the received media stream. The recovered signal is an accurate representation of the state of the received media stream since it has gone through the same packetization/depacketization and encoding/decoding procedures, and it includes all of the same faults of the copied media stream. The perceptual quality of the recovered signal is then measured, providing an accurate measure of the perceptual quality of the copied media stream. The method may be applied to packetized as well as non-packetized voice signals.

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.