Adtran Gmbh

Carina Technology, Inc.

Bristol Tech Essential Services

Carina Technologies, Inc.

Michael Scott Sansom

Robert James Toth

Adrian O'Neil

Benjamin F Harbin, Iii

R Michael Browder

Brook Marin

Cecil Ray Holland, Jr

Kevin W Schneider

W Stuart Venters

Lonnie S McMillian

Gary M Willoughby

Philip David Williams

Timothy David Rochell

John B Wilkes, Jr

Roger W Cain

Thomas L Ballard, Iii

Robert J Toth

Mark Jeffries Ogden

Adrian O'neil

Benjamin F Harbin

Cecil Ray Holland

A system for shifting energy demand from on-peak time windows to off-peak time windows by using hot water heater load shifting, while providing the end user with the level of service (i.e., availability of hot water) according to the user's customary use described by service quality criteria. The shift is accomplished by a controller located at the end user establishment and in communication with a central control server. The controller monitors local water heater temperature and controls heating elements in accordance with a demand shift process commanded by the central control server. The controller may determine usage and remaining capacity for reporting back to the central control server. A volumetric capacity and usage determination is disclosed. The control server may select water heaters according to use and/or capacity. Further embodiments may regulate load dependent properties of the power including voltage, phase and/or frequency.

Water heater demand side management system

A system for shifting energy demand from on-peak time windows to off-peak time windows by using hot water heater load shifting, while providing the end user with the level of service (i.e., availability of hot water) according to the user's customary use described by service quality criteria. The shift is accomplished by a controller located at the end user establishment and in communication with a central control server. The controller monitors local water heater upper and/or lower temperature and controls upper and/or lower water heater heating elements in accordance with a demand shift process commanded by the central control server. The controller may determine usage and remaining capacity for reporting back to the central control server. A volumetric capacity and usage determination is disclosed. The control server may select water heaters according to use patterns and/or measured capacity. One embodiment is adapted for use with existing water heaters without disrupting safety features of the existing water heater.

Relatively low cost asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) service and auxiliary POTS service are delivered over extended distances (e.g., at least 20&#x2013;25 kft), by a hybrid ADSL-SDSL architecture insertable between central office and remote sites of an ADSL system. Central office and remote site transceivers employ trellis coded pulse amplitude modulation and a data rate that conforms with the signal transport capability of an extended distance symmetric DSL (SDSL) loop, while providing a 64K POTS channel. The central office and remote site transceivers controllably insert idle asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) cells in upstream and downstream ADSL channels to compensate for timing differences with ADSL equipment.

System for providing extended range ADSL service with auxiliary pots channel over single-line digital subscriber link

A multi-circuit emulating line card is installable in a single line card slot of the backplane of digital switch, and is configured to emulate the functionality of each of a plurality of digital switch line cards, respectively associated with plural digital subscriber circuits served by the switch. In the course of emulating these plural line cards, the multi-circuit line card provides connectivity between each digital subscriber circuit and a digital carrier communication link to plural digital subscriber loop circuits, such as BRITE cards of a remote terminal site. The line card of the invention also includes network and subscriber circuit-associated metallic link impedance simulation circuits for terminating a metallic test bus.

Digital switch-resident multi-circuit line card providing direct connection to remote terminal

The currently defined industry standard framing structure for 2B1Q ISDN signaling, at 160 kilobaud, provides 128 kbps for a customer (B B ) data channel, and 16 kbps for a data (D) channel. Of the remaining 16 kbps non payload bandwidth, 4 kbps are used for overhead maintenance data. Eight kbps of the remaining 12 kbps of non payload bandwidth, that customarily transport a repeated framing pattern, are usurped for the transport of an auxiliary compressed (from 64 KHz to 8 KHz) digitized voice POTS channel, that is sufficient to transport toll quality voice. The remaining framing pattern bandwidth is adequate prevent an unacceptable reduction in bit error rate.

Use of robbed framing bits to provide secondary pots channel over extended range ISDN communications network

A software-based automated DS0 channel format analysis routine resident in a U-BRITE interface card's microcontroller solves the problem of potential misconfiguration of ISDN interface circuit cards, as may result from the failure to properly set DS0 time slot option switches to their intended ISDN channel assignments. When exercised, the routine automatically determines not only what DS0 channels are available at the remote ISDN circuit card, but also the order in which those DS0 channels are multiplexed by that remote card's circuitry. As a consequence, once the routine has run to completion, each ISDN interface card will contain the same DS0 time slot multiplexing scheme&mdash;corresponding to what has been manually configured at a remote card&mdash;even if the remote card's DS0 option switches were originally incorrectly set.

Mechanism for automatically determining ISDN channel availability

In order to ensure continuous telephone service to a customer premises served by an ISDN line, without requiring that the customer maintain an additional POTS line as an emergency back-up to the normally used ISDN service, ISDN signalling circuits and network termination interface components are modified, so that, in the event of a loss of power to customer premises digital communications equipment, a communication link between an auxiliary POTS telephone and the normal ISDN communication path to the central office may be established. There need not be any modification of the central office switch, per se, so that the integrity of the ISDN communication path with the central office line card remains unaffected. As a result, the central office equipment can continue to conduct standard ISDN communications with the customer premises equipment, even though the customer is employing a POTS back-up analog phone.

Mechanism for providing emergency POTS service in event of loss of power to customer premises equipment for ISDN telephone lines

Digital switch-resistant multi-circuit line card providing direct connection to remote terminal

Mechanism for providing emergency POTS service in event of loss of power

An overhead bit-usurping multiplexing/demultiplexing mechanism increases the overall effective ISDN channel-conveying capacity of a serial digital data communication link, and thereby enables a terminal site channel bank to provide ISDN service to an additional number of customer premises equipments, other than the eight DSL channels normally accommodated within the twenty-four time slots of a (T1) TDM frame. Each condensed TDM DSL channel contains first and second multibit B information signal time slots, a multibit D information signal time slot, and a maintenance bit. No other auxiliary bits of a standard TR-NWT-000397 mode D+ octet are included, so that the compressed content TDM DSL channels have a smaller number of bits per channel than the standard TR-NWT-000397 format. As a result, when controllably interleaved with one another, the total number of TDM DSL channels (e.g., ten DSL channels) is larger than the eight DSL channels that would normally be accommodated within the twenty-four time slots of the TDM link.

Method for increasing ISDN channel capacity of TDM serial communication

To extend the transmission distance for basic rate integrated services digital network (ISDN) communications between a first site and a second site, the basic rate ISDN channel is demultiplexed onto a pair of half-rate digital subscriber loop channels, which employ an out of band maintenance channel to convey differential delay compensation information, but without modifying the framing structure of the transported channels, or requiring additional bandwidth for a separate framing channel. Halving the data rate, to increase the distance over which the basic rate ISDN channel may be transported, operates as a trade-off against loop loss, while still complying with ANSI standards.

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Huntsville, AL, United States of America

Michael Scott Sansom