Northern Telecom Limited

Alan M Redmond

Alan S Chapman

Nadir Nizamuddin

John W Williams

Robert S Morley

Terence N Thomas

David J Robertson

Ronald J Maginley

Jin Kue Wong

Keith Daniel O'Neill

David Charles Ploeg

William Owen Bird

Garry Don Mah

Peter David Gale

Christian Jacques Szpilfogel

Shoji Matsushita

A wireless telephone system provides telecommunications services for personal wireless telephone sets over an area which is divided into service cells. Each of the cells is defined by reception characteristics of a plurality of radio base stations within the cell. The telephone system includes a service controller and a port being wireline connected between each radio base station and the service controller. The service controller selects radio base stations for setting up radio links with wireless sets of calling or called persons. A base station which serves a wireless set and surrounding idle base stations monitor strengths of radio signals received from the wireless set and report running averages of the monitored signal strengths to the service controller. Movement of the wireless set from one cell to another cell during a call is detected as a drop in the running average reported by the serving base station. The service controller selects an idle base station to which the call is handed off based on the running averages reported by the idle base stations only idle base stations having a running average greater than the serving base station report their running average.

Low-power wireless system for telephone services

A key telephone system includes a plurality of ports linked by port associated bidirectional communication channels which are synchronously switched by transferring bit states between ones of the channels to provide communication paths between the ports as directed by a central processor. The ports are also linkable to and via the central processor by port associated message channels. An interface circuit is responsive to the central processor and message channel signals for regulating flow of messages received by the central processor and for effecting single and plural channel distribution of messages from the central processor. The message channels permit telephony operating features and functions to be provided either within the central processor or by appropriate apparatus means being connected at any of the ports. In such a telephone system at least one of said apparatus comprises a telephone station apparatus and another of said apparatus comprises a feature host apparatus. The telephone station apparatus has a plurality of functions stored therein and said feature host apparatus has a plurality of feature modules stored therein. Each such feature module comprises instructions for invoking a corresponding set of functions at said telephone station apparatus by means of an exchange of signalling and supervision messages between said feature host apparatus and said telephone station apparatus. The functions invoked provide the feature selected by a feature request action of a user at said telephone station apparatus.

Digital key telephone system

A key telephone system includes a plurality of ports being linked by port associated bidirectional communication channels which are synchronously switched by transferring bit states between ones of the channels to provide communication paths between the ports as directed by a central processor. The ports are also linkable to and via the central processor by port associated message channels. An interface circuit is responsive to the central processor and message channel signals for regulating flow of messages received by the central processor and for effecting single and plural channel distribution of messages from the central processor. The message channels permit telephony operating features and functions to be provided either within the central processor or by appropriate apparatus means being connected at any of the ports.

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Kanata, Canada

Alan M Redmond