Method of transmitting voice signals in a packet switching network

Claim 1

Method of transmitting voice signals from a source exchange telephone device (10) to a destination exchange telephone device (12) through a packet switching network (26) including an input access node (28) which is connected to said source exchange telephone device for receiving a plurality of digital voice signal samples from a plurality of voice signal terminals such as telephone sets with said plurality of digital samples being received in a same plurality of time slots of a time division multiplex (TDM) frame, and an output access node (30) connected to said destination exchange telephone device for transmitting thereto said plurality of digital voice signal samples with said plurality of digital samples being transmitted in a same plurality of time slots of a time division multiplex (TDM) frame ; said method being characterized by the following steps : packetization, by said input access node, of said plurality of digital samples received in a TDM frame from said source exchange telephone device into a data packet, said packetization consisting in putting into the first byte of said data packet the first digital sample obtained by applying a frame slot/packet byte one-to-one mapping to said plurality of digital samples, putting into the second byte of said data packet the second digital sample obtained by applying said one-to-one mapping to the remaining digital samples, and so on until all digital samples of said plurality of digital samples have been put into said data packet, and depacketization of said data packet by said output access node, consisting in placing the first byte of said data packet into a slot of a TDM frame to be transmitted to said destination exchange telephone device by applying said frame slot/packet byte one-to-one mapping to said first byte, placing the second byte of said data packet into a slot of said TDM frame by applying said one-to-one mapping to said second byte, and so on until all bytes of said data packet corresponding to said plurality of digital samples have been placed into said TDM frame.