ENHANCED INTERWORKING FUNCTION FOR INTERFACING DIGITAL CELLULAR VOICE AND FAX PROTOCOLS AND INTERNET PROTOCOLS

摘要

An enhanced interworking function (E-IWF) (14) supports a method of direct digital interworking between a radio telecommunications network (15-18) and standard Internet Protocol (IP) routers (12-13). A general purpose interworking function performs speech transcoding and data interworking. A specific translation interworking function translates directly between mobile-specific voice incoding (24) and Voice-over-IP protocols (23), and between mobile-specific fax encoding (62) and Fax-on-IP protocols (71). The method provides interworking between cellular protocols in a time division multiple access (TDMA) cellular telecommunications network, and Internet protocols being utilized by an Internet End-System (ES) (31) or fax gateway (49).