HK1103325A1 - Video conference call setup via in-bound controlling message - Google Patents

Abstract

The method includes steps: extending message of access request (ARQ) and message of access confirmation (ACF) to RAS (register, admission, and status) signaling between user terminal and gatekeeper; user terminal transfers extended ARQ message including information of calling in conference to gatekeeper, which transfers the message to operational support platform; based on current resources, the operational support platform transfers feedback information to gatekeeper; gatekeeper transfers extended ACF message including feedback information to user terminal and meanwhile dispatches managed multipoint control unit to call in related terminals to take part in conference. Comparing with prior art, the invention overcomes disadvantages of manual work for calling in related terminals to take part in conference, low efficiency and not flexible mode of implementation and operation, and long period for calling in a conference.

Description

Method for user terminal to autonomously initiate conference call in-band mode

Technical Field

The invention relates to the technical field of video communication, in particular to a method for autonomously initiating a conference call in an in-band mode by a user terminal based on an H.323 system.

Background

With the rapid development of telecommunication industry, communication among people becomes easier, and from the traditional telegraph, telephone, fax and other modes to the world-popular internet, the work and life of people are greatly facilitated. With the improvement of processing capability and the increase of network bandwidth of terminal devices, video communication technology becomes a new hot spot at present. As a multimedia service, the video communication service integrates information such as voice, image, data, etc. for long-distance transmission. When people communicate in different places, people can hear the voice of the other party and see the image of the other party, so that the sense of reality, intimacy and telepresence of communication in different places are increased.

As shown in fig. 1, a video communication system generally comprises a user terminal (104), a Gatekeeper (GK) (102), a Multipoint Control Unit (MCU) (103), a transmission channel (105), and an operation support platform (101).

The video user terminal (104) is a user side device of the video conference service, and is mainly responsible for the acquisition and coding of images and voice in a conference place, and the functions of unpacking, decoding, outputting, conference control and the like of received images and voice media streams.

The Gatekeeper (GK) (102) is a resource management device for video conference services, and the GK's management objects are MCUs, video terminals, etc. The main functions are as follows: address resolution, access control, bandwidth management, area management, and providing an interface with an operation support system, providing conference authentication, billing information, and the like.

A Multipoint Control Unit (MCU) (103) is a tandem processing device for video conference services, and is logically divided into a Multipoint Controller (MC) and a Multipoint Processor (MP), where the MC provides call setup and control functions for a multiparty video conference, and the control functions of the MC are completed through h.245. In a multiparty video conference, an MP receives audio, video and data streams from a terminal or cascaded MCU, GW, processes these media streams and sends them back to the terminal, MCU or GW.

The operation support platform (101) is the sum of a series of modules of conference scheduling, service management, accounting charging, network management and the like. The main functions of the system are to realize the unified control, unified resource scheduling and management of the video network, and to complete the control and management of the whole flow of the video service through the interaction with the video exchange layer equipment.

The transmission channel (105) is used for the transmission of media streams and control streams.

In a normal h.323 system, a user terminal and a gatekeeper communicate with each other using Remote Access Service (RAS) signaling, which is incapable of transmitting conferencing information such as a meeting place, a conference control password, service quality, and the like, and therefore, a conventional video conference employs a manual subscription mode in order to transmit the conferencing information. That is, the video user makes a reservation to the system administrator, that is, the user terminal manually notifies the system administrator of the conference call information, and after the reservation is successful, the administrator schedules the conference through the operation support platform at the reserved time. The conference holding mode necessarily requires a special person to be responsible for holding the conference on the operation support platform side, and the implementation mode is not flexible enough.

Disclosure of Invention

The invention aims to overcome the defects that the traditional video conference calling mode needs manual responsibility for calling, the realization mode is inflexible, the operation mode is low in efficiency, and the conference calling period is long, and provides a method for automatically calling a conference.

In order to achieve the above object, the present invention provides a method for a user terminal to autonomously initiate a conference call in an in-band manner, comprising: expanding an access request ARQ message and an access confirmation ACF message in a remote access service RAS signaling between a user terminal and a gatekeeper; the user terminal transmits the conference calling information to the gatekeeper in the expanded remote access request ARQ message, and the gatekeeper transmits the information to the operation support platform; the operation support platform transmits the feedback information to the gatekeeper, the gatekeeper transmits the feedback information to the user terminal in the expanded ACF message, and meanwhile, the multipoint control unit governed by the operation support platform calls the terminal related to the conference to enter the conference.

The access request ARQ message and the access confirmation ACF message in the remote access service RAS signaling between the extended user terminal and the gatekeeper are implemented by the NonStandardData field of the extended access request ARQ message and the access confirmation ACF message. This field is used for compatibility.

Wherein the NonStandardData field of the access request ARQ message may be extended to include one or more of: command serial number, command type, conference name, conference control password, conference mode, charging type, account number, password, whether data conference is needed or not, and multi-picture identification parameter information.

Wherein the NonStandardData field of the access confirmation ACF message may be extended to include one or more of: conference ID, user call result, result description information.

Since the user terminal and the gatekeeper communicate with Remote Access Service (RAS) signaling which does not support the transmission of the conferencing information in the normal H.323 system, and the conferencing information must be transmitted manually, the invention extends the Access Request (ARQ) message and the Access Confirmation (ACF) message in the Remote Access Service (RAS) signaling between the user terminal and the gatekeeper, the user puts the information related to the conferencing such as the conference name, the conference control password, the conference mode, the charging type, the account number, etc. in the NonStandardData field of the extended Access Request (ARQ) message, i.e. in-band to the gatekeeper, the gatekeeper puts the information such as the conference ID, the user calling result, etc. in the NonStandardData field of the extended Access Confirmation (ACF) message, i.e. in-band to send back the user terminal, and organizes the terminal access through the multipoint control unit, the whole process is automatic, the method does not need manual reservation, and overcomes the defects of manual responsibility for convening, inflexible implementation mode, low efficiency of operation mode and long conference convening period in the prior art. The solution of the present aspect puts the conference call right down to the user himself, which provides a good foundation for the popularization of the video service of the public.

Drawings

Embodiments of the invention are described below with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:

fig. 1 is a schematic diagram of an h.323-based video communication system according to the present invention;

fig. 2 is a flow diagram of a method by which a user terminal autonomously initiates a conference call in an in-band manner.

Detailed Description

The present invention will be more readily understood by those skilled in the art from the following description of specific embodiments thereof taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.

Referring to fig. 1, fig. 1 shows a schematic diagram of an h.323-based video communication system, which includes a user terminal (104), a transmission channel (105), a GK (102), a multipoint control unit (103), and an operation support platform (101). The operation support platform is internally provided with a conference management module which is responsible for scheduling and managing the whole conference, and the core functions of the operation support platform are completed in the operation support platform. An Access Request (ARQ) message and an access Acknowledge (ACF) message in Remote Access Service (RAS) signaling between a subscriber terminal and a gatekeeper are extended, and a specific extension method will be described in detail below. The present invention requires that both the user terminal and the GK support the extended RAS signaling message format, which can be achieved by a simple programming by those skilled in the art according to the following extended in-band ARQ and RAS message formats.

Referring to fig. 2, fig. 2 shows a call flow in which a user initiates a conference call directly through a terminal. By extending the ARQ message, the user terminal sends the conference parameters and information, such as the conference name, the conference control password, the conference mode, the charging type, the account number, etc., which will be described in detail below, to the GK, and after the user terminal sends the ARQ message, the GK can identify and forward the ARQ message to the conference management module of the operation support platform, as shown by the arrow in the first row in fig. 2. The conference management module schedules the conference according to the received information and feeds back the scheduling result to the GK, and the GK carries the scheduling result information by extending the ACF message and transmits it to the user terminal, as shown in the second row in fig. 2. And simultaneously, a conference management module of the operation supporting platform schedules MCU resources governed by the conference management module, and the MCU calls all terminals to join in a conference according to a normal flow. The normal flow is the same as the prior art, and comprises that an MCU sends an ARQ message to a gatekeeper, a GK returns an ACF message to the MCU, then the MCU sends a setup (setup) request to a user terminal (104), the user terminal sends the ARQ message to the gatekeeper, the GK responds through the ACF message, and then the user terminal connects (connect) to the MCU. A similar approach can be used for other terminals (104') involved in the conference.

Table 1 below shows the specific contents contained in the field of ARQ NonStandardData according to the present invention; table 2 shows the specific contents contained in the extended ACF NonStandardData field.

Table 1 shows the specific contents contained in the extension field in the RAS signaling message. From the compatibility, the extension of the NonStandardData field of the ARQ and ACF messages is specifically adopted. The extension field is required to support both Object ID and h.221 extensions.

Sequence number of command
	Type of command
Conference name
	Conference control password
Conference mode
	Type of charge
Account number
	Cipher code
Whether or not data conferencing is required
	Multi-picture identification

Table 1 details contained in the ARQ NonStandardData field extended by the present invention

Table 1 shows specific contents included in the field of the extended NonStandardData in the ARQ message, including parameter information such as a command sequence number, a command type, a conference name, a conference control password, a conference mode, a charging type, an account number, a password, whether a data conference is required, a multi-screen identifier, and the like, but may also include a part of them, rather than all of them. In addition, other information or parameters related to the summons may also be included. The above table is included in the scope of the present invention as long as the person skilled in the art can conceive it.

Table 2 shows the specific contents contained in the extended ACF NonStandardData field.

Sequence number of command
	Meeting ID
Calling set result
	Result description information

Table 2 specific contents contained in the extended ACF NonStandardData field

Table 2 shows specific contents included in the extended NonStandardData field in the ACF message, including a conference ID, a user call result, result description information, and the like, but may also include a part thereof, rather than all of it. In addition, other information or parameters related to the summons may also be included. The above table is included in the scope of the present invention as long as the person skilled in the art can conceive it.

The content format of the specific content contained in the NonStandardData field of the ARQ and ACF is defined in the present invention. In addition, message fields such as StreamMediaType, StreamMediaInfo, MediaType, DataRate, QosClass, Videocoding, VideoFrame, FrameRate, Voicecoding, TerminalInfo, TerminalType, LangugType, CallingTerminalType, MultiStream, Streamattribute, StreamDescripte, AudioStream, VideoStream, Role, Securonf, SecureAttribute, DataConferenceAttribute, DataConferenceType, and the like may be defined in ARQ.

Thus, the user terminal puts the information related to conference calling, such as the conference name, the conference control password, the conference mode, the charging type, the account number, and the like, in the NonStandardData field of the extended Access Request (ARQ) message and sends the information to the gatekeeper, and after the gatekeeper obtains the feedback of the operation support platform, the gatekeeper sends the information of the conference ID, the user calling result, and the like, which are fed back, in the NonStandardData field of the extended Access Confirmation (ACF) message and sends the information back to the user terminal, thereby realizing the automatic conference calling of the user terminal.

While the foregoing detailed description describes a method for implementing a user-terminated autonomous conference on an h.323-based system in accordance with the present invention, those skilled in the art will appreciate that modifications, improvements and substitutions can be made in various embodiments of the invention in accordance with the principles of the present invention without departing from the principles of the present invention. The invention is defined by the appended claims.

Claims (4)

1. A method for a user terminal to autonomously initiate a conference call in an in-band manner, comprising:

expanding an access request ARQ message and an access confirmation ACF message in a remote access service RAS signaling between a user terminal and a gatekeeper;

the user terminal transmits the conference calling information to the gatekeeper in the expanded remote access request ARQ message, and the gatekeeper transmits the information to the operation support platform;

the operation support platform transmits the feedback information to the gatekeeper, the gatekeeper transmits the feedback information to the user terminal in the expanded ACF message, and meanwhile, the multipoint control unit governed by the operation support platform calls the terminal related to the conference to enter the conference.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the access request ARQ message and the access acknowledge ACF message in the remote access service RAS signaling between the extended user terminal and the gatekeeper are implemented by a NonStandardData field of the extended access request ARQ message and the access acknowledge ACF message.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the NonStandardData field of the access request ARQ message is extended to include one or more of: command serial number, command type, conference name, conference control password, conference mode, charging type, account number, password, whether data conference is needed or not, and multi-picture identification parameter information.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein the NonStandardData field of the access acknowledge, ACF, message is extended to include one or more of: conference ID, user call result, result description information.