The present invention relates to a paging system, and in particular to a receiver having a microprocessor-based control unit which decodes a transmitted radio frequency paging signal for providing a display on a linear array of elements and scrolling the displayed characters through the array.
In conventional radio frequency paging systems, individual portable receivers have a linear array of display elements on which the message is displayed upon detection of a match between a received address code and the subscriber's own code which is assigned to the receiver. The wordlength of the message usually exceeds the capacity of the display elements due to the small space available. The current practice is to display a portion of the received message at a time and then scroll it on a per character basis from one end of the array toward the other. However, this type of scrolling demands rapid eye movements and renders the message less intelligible since written information is usually perceived on a per word or word-group basis.