The present invention generally pertains to communications systems and is particularly directed to an improved base station for use in a subscriber communication network, such as a wireless digital telephone system.
A base station for a wireless telephone system having a plurality of subscriber stations is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,675,863 issued June 23, 1987, for "Subscriber RF Telephone System For Providing Multiple Speech And/Or Data Signals Simultaneously Over Either A Single Or A Plurality of RF Channels".
The base station described in the above-referenced patent communicates signals between subscriber stations and an external communication network having a plurality of ports. Such base station includes a communication circuit for enabling simultaneous communications between a plurality of the ports and a plurality of subscriber stations over a given communication channel having multiple sequentially repetitive time slots, with predetermined time slots being assigned respectively to predetermined subscriber stations; a remote-connection processor (RPU) for directing communications between the time slot assigned to a given subscriber station and a given port; and an exchange for connecting the communication circuit to the ports. The exchange includes a switch, which responds to a control signal from the RPU by physically connecting a selected port to a selected communication channel time slot assigned to a given subscriber station. The communication circuit includes a plurality of channel control units (CCUs) for coupling the assigned communication channel time slot to the given subscriber station in response to a command signal communicated by the RPU to CCU's over a base-station control channel (BCC) in response to status messages provided over the BCC to the RPU to indicate the usage status of the communication channel time slots and the subscriber stations. The assigned communication channel time slot is coupled to the given subscriber station by an assigned time slot in an assigned radio frequency (RF) channel. The BCC is provided over lines seprately connected directly from the RPU to each of the CCUs. Control commands and status messages are communicated between the CCUs and the subscriber stations over a radio control channel (RCC) assigned to a predetermined time slot of a predetermined RF channel.