Abstract: The present invention is a wireless network system, which comprises at least one wireless instrument (e.g. a cellular telephone) in combination with at least one cradle (e.g. a telephone cradle), said cradle comprising a wireless local area network (WLAN) interface. The WLAN interface, which interfaces to a WLAN, allows the cradle to communicate with a controller. In turn, the controller communicates with a base station of a wireless communications network. In a variation of the exemplary embodiment, a wired local area network (LAN) can be utilized rather than the WLAN. Alternatively, the present invention supports point-to-point communication configurations between each wireless cellular telephone and the controller. Typically, the base station is owned and operated by wireless service provider. The wireless service provider directly supports service for the wireless cellular telephone when the telephone is not operating in conjunction with the wireless network system.

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.

Abstract: A wireless-access communications system, such as 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). Traffic of individual calls is packetized, and packet-bearing frames (300 in FIG. 7) of a plurality of calls are then statistically multiplexed and frame-relayed through the network to yield the high capacity, efficiency, and speed of traffic transport and handoff required for a CDMA cellular system. At each call processing unit (264 in FIG. 5), individual calls are handled by individual service circuits (602 and 612) which perform speech-processing functions such as coding and decoding, tone insertion, and echo cancellation, and packet-to-circuit-switched-PCM traffic conversion.

Abstract: Supervisory audio tones received from a mobile telephone unit are converted from analog to digital form. The tone is then converted to a complex number by bifurcating the tone path and multiplying one path by a sine function and the other path by a cosine function. The complex numbers are accumulated and the frequencies where significant power exists is found using the discrete Fourier transform. If the power at an assigned frequency exceeds a threshold, the corresponding supervisory audio tone is declared to have been detected.

Abstract: Received baseband data signals, in the form of signals having at least one level transition per symbol indicative of symbol information state, are sampled (17) at a rate much higher than the symbol rate. The samples are used to control the direction of counting (20) of local clock (12) signals recurring at that higher rate during symbol subintervals of predetermined duration. Counts produced during adjacent subintervals are processed (FIGS. 4 and 5) to produce several different results such as recognition of the start of an asynchronously occurring data message, acquisition and tracking of symbol phase in the message, and detection of symbol information states.