Facsimile and static presentation processing – Facsimile – Facsimile system interface
Reexamination Certificate
1997-06-17
2003-08-26
Nguyen, Madeleine (Department: 2622)
Facsimile and static presentation processing
Facsimile
Facsimile system interface
C358S443000, C379S100130, C345S215000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06611358
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention is directed, in general, to wireless communication and, more specifically, to a transcoding system and method that optimizes documents to be transmitted to a mobile station for display thereon and a wireless infrastructure employing the same.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The importance of wireless communication systems today is evident by its usage in popular platforms such as mobile telephony, paging systems and portable computers. The popularity of wireless communication systems is, in part, a result of the flexibility the system provides to the user. The user is provided instant communication on demand at any location, within certain restrictions. While conventional wireless communication systems provide both voice communication and document transmitting capabilities, the next generation systems will provide enhanced communication services such as electronic mail and full multimedia communication. The expanded capabilities will further enhance the user document accessing and retrieval capabilities.
With regard to the document handling capabilities, documents are stored in various formats depending on the creator, the maintainer or distributor of the document. Mobile stations (especially wireless stations), however, are generally unable to interpret all formats. Due to the compactness and relative simplicity of the design, the mobile stations are not equipped with the hardware or computational power to accommodate multi-format document interpretation. Thus, the mobile stations only recognize a limited number of document formats thereby effectively limiting the document handling capability thereof.
Another problem encountered when transmitting information to mobile stations is the relatively low communication bandwidth associated with the mobile station. Documents in formats that are not supported by the mobile station (e.g., documents that include both text and graphics to a station that supports text-only documents) may require additional bandwidth. Obviously, the use of the excess bandwidth is an inefficient use of bandwidth if the mobile station is unable to recognize a substantial portion of the document. As the congestion in the wireless communication systems continues to increase, the multi-formatted documents will place undue burdens on the available bandwidth of the system (if the station cannot recognize the document) thereby resulting in a slower overall system response time.
With regard to the content of the documents, the document may be formatted for certain graphics display systems such as video graphics array (“VGA”) or super video graphics array (“SVGA”). If the mobile station has graphics capability, the screens associated therewith tend to be very small and monochrome. For instance, a VGA system in text mode provides a resolution of about 720 by 400 pixels; in the graphics mode, the resolution of the VGA system is about 640 by 480 pixels (with 16 colors) or 320 by 200 pixels(with 256 colors). The display for a mobile station (such as a pager) only provides a resolution of about 80 by 25 pixels. Thus, transmitting data to a station without considering the station's display capabilities and screen resolution is an inefficient use of the limited bandwidth available for the wireless communication systems.
Currently, documents are transmitted in wireless communication systems without regard to the capabilities of the mobile stations. Thus, to recognize and, if possible, process documents in different formats, the mobile station must be equipped with additional hardware and software to perform the necessary tasks. As a result, the mobile station expends more energy in an attempt to process the document. Mobile stations such as portable computers and mobile telephones are generally powered by a plurality of batteries. Obviously, the operational life of the mobile station depends on the operational life of the batteries powering the system. The operational life of the batteries is a function of its stored energy capacity and the power requirements of the device supported by the batteries. A lower stored energy capacity results in a shorter operational life-span. Similarly, the greater operational demands of the supported device reduces the operational life of the battery. When a mobile station uses more hardware and software, the power requirements necessary to adequately power and operate the mobile station are increased. Therefore, it is desirable to reduce the demands of the mobile station to ultimately reduce the demands on the power system (e.g., battery system).
Therefore, what is needed in the art is a recognition that mobile stations have varying degrees of document handling capabilities and, in conjunction therewith, a system and method of transmitting documents to a mobile station in a format that corresponds to the document handling capabilities and, in particular, the document display capabilities thereof.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
To address the above-discussed deficiencies of the prior art, the present invention provides a system and method for transcoding a document to be transmitted to a mobile station according to document display capabilities thereof and a wireless infrastructure containing the same. The system includes: (1) a station identifying circuit that receives data indicating a particular mobile station's document display capabilities and (2) a transcoding circuit that modifies the document according to the document display capabilities before the document is transmitted to the particular mobile station, the particular mobile station thereby freed of having locally to substantially modify the document according to the document display capabilities.
“Transcoding” is defined for purposes of the present invention as a process of translation, transformation, modification or substitution that results in a document being changed in terms of its structure, format, length, attributes (to be defined) or temporal transmission order. “Document” is defined for purposes of the present invention as anything that can be visually displayed (such as text, a graphical image, a photograph or a video stream) and any data ancillary to that which is visually displayed (usually in the form of multimedia attachments, such as imbedded images or sounds). Those skilled in the art are aware that today's multimedia systems operate on integrated multimedia documents. The present invention is fully capable of transcoding such documents, as well as more conventional, single media documents.
The present invention therefore introduces the broad concept of modifying documents to accommodate features or limitations of the mobile stations to which they are to be transmitted before they are actually transmitted. When the documents arrive at the mobile station, they are ready to display, without requiring substantial modification. Not only does the present invention relieve the mobile station's processor of the overhead of performing such modifications, the mobile station is not required to contain the software or circuitry required to perform the modifications. The result is twofold: mobile station power is saved (allowing longer battery life) and, in cases wherein modification results in a reduction in document size, bandwidth and the time taken to transmit the document are decreased (allowing a given infrastructure to communicate more documents).
In one embodiment of the present invention, the transcoding circuit translates the document from a first display format to a second display format, the document display capabilities including a capability of displaying the document in the second display format. Today's common still image formats include: bitmap (“BMP”), Graphics Interchange Format (“GIF”), Joint Photographic Experts Group (“JPEG”) and Tagged Image File Format (“TIFF”). Today's common video formats include: Motion Picture Experts Group (“MPEG”) I and II and IEEE H.320. Thus, the particular mobile station may be capable of displaying a JPEG-encoded document, but not one that is GIF-enc
Lucent Technologies - Inc.
Nguyen Madeleine
Pokrzywa Joseph R.
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