The invention relates to a paging receiver comprising a receiving circuit for the receiving and detecting of a first data block transmitted by a transmitting device, of which a second data block represents an address code for one or more receivers;
a first memory in which a received first data block is stored;
a first comparator which detects a first equality if the received address code is equal to an address code assigned to the receiver;
a second memory with two or more memory locations which are each suitable for the storing therein of a third data block of various first data blocks;
a first control circuit which, when the first equality occurs, scans locations of the second memory, compares by means of a second comparator the contents of corresponding sections of third data blocks which are present in the first memory and in the scanned location respectively, and alters the content of the scanned location depending on a second equality detected by the second comparator;
a second control circuit for the selection of a location of the second memory;
and an indicating element for the indication of a section of the third data block which is present in a location selected by the second control circuit.
A paging receiver of this type is known from British Pat. No. GB.2,101,779. In the known paging receiver the first, second and third data blocks are equal to each other and equal to the section of the third data block which is read out of the second memory and which can be displayed as a message on a window of the indicating element. On receipt of the data block the first control circuit will scan all the locations of the second memory and compare the content of each scanned location with the information content of the received data block. If an equality is detected in this process, the storage of the received data block in the second memory is prevented. If, after scanning all the locations, no equality is detected the oldest message present in the second memory is erased and the memory space which becomes available as a result of this is used for the storage of the newly received data block.
In the known paging receiver a newly received data block cannot be stored in a random location of the second memory. This is in particular troublesome if the oldest message recorded in the second memory contains more important information for the carrier of the paging receiver than the other messages recorded in the first and second memories. The importance of this drawback becomes particularly obvious in paging receiver systems with which emergency calls can be sent to service personnel such as in a nurse paging system.
Another important drawback of the known paging receiver is that a message no longer considered of importance by a user of the transmitting device is maintained in the second memory of the receiver so that the carrier of the receiver is inaccurately informed and may take an incorrect action.
The object of the invention is to eliminate the drawbacks of the known paging receiver.