Adtran Gmbh

Carina Technology, Inc.

Bristol Tech Essential Services

Carina Technologies, Inc.

Robert James Toth

Michael Scott Sansom

Adrian O'Neil

Cecil Ray Holland, Jr

R Michael Browder

Benjamin F Harbin, Iii

Brook Marin

Gary M Willoughby

W Stuart Venters

Dennis B McMahan

Neil M Jensen

Timothy David Rochell

Richard A Burch

Lonnie S McMillian

Roger W Cain

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.

An integrated system concurrently connects voice and data communications devices used by small and medium sized businesses to a network T1 data line terminating at the customer premises. A system chassis includes multiple slots and backplane connectors for removably receiving a bank controller unit (BCU), power service unit (PSU), and one or more different types of smart and dumb voice and data access modules that provide the functional interface to the customer premises equipment. The BCU controls the operation of the system, which can be configured by the customer through an external terminal interface.

Modular system for connecting multiple customer premises voice and data communications devices to a T1 data line

A single switch fabric-based, multi-channel bank digital subscriber line access multiplexer includes a master channel bank containing a master switch module in which the switch fabric and a downstream-directed traffic scheduler reside, and one or more expansion channel banks that are linked with the master channel bank by way of upstream and downstream communication links. Distributed among the channel banks are respective policing mechanisms and cell rate control mechanisms that control upstream-directed communications from line card ports of each expansion channel bank to the switch fabric. Downstream data transmissions are locked to network timing, and are scheduled by a centralized scheduling mechanism resident in the master channel bank.

System architecture for linking channel banks of a data communication system

An inter-channel bank addressing and identification protocol, for use with a multi channel bank, digital subscriber line access multiplexer (DSLAM), enables the control processor of a master channel bank to selectively communicate with control processors of subtended slave channel banks, and allows a subtended slave shelf to retain provisioning information, irrespective of a change in shelf location or removal of a subtended slave shelf between the master shelf and another subtended slave shelf. The inter-channel bank addressing and identification protocol uses a shelf address code that is controllably incremented or decremented during the transport of a packet between the master and a slave shelf. In addition, a shelf address code is assigned each slave shelf during initialization. These two codes enable the master to track which channel bank is in which shelf bay.

Method and system for preserving channel bank provisioning information when unit location changes within multi-shelf equipment rack

An embedded operations channel (EOC)-based signalling mechanism is incorporated within transceiver interface (U-BR1TE) components of an integrated services digital network (ISDN) telecommunication system, for effecting a relatively fast, warm start reactivation of a previously deactivated extended ISDN link between an ISDN switch and customer premises equipment. In response to the EOC-embedded 'wake-up the loop' message, the receiving U-BR1TE card supplies a 10 Khz wake-up tone to its associated termination equipment (either to the NT-1 in the case of a switch-sourced reactivation, or to the ISDN switch in the case of an NT-1 sourced wake-up request), to reestablish the ISDN loop.

Deactivation of extended basic rate ISDN link

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

A reduced cost and hardware complexity ISDN channel bank architecture supports a plurality of Basic Rate-One Transmission Extension (BRITE) ISDN circuit cards. Rather than install a dedicated processor on each BRITE card or multiple BRITE circuits on one card, each BRITE circuit card of the channel bank has no processor of its own, but is instead controlled by a shared control processor on a separate bank controller card. Since each such `processorless` BRITE circuit card contains only single BRITE circuit, removal of any one BRITE circuit card from its backplane slot will not impair the operational integrity of the other BRITE cards, so that service to customer premises equipment terminating the local loops to such cards is not interrupted. The shared processor on the bank controller card executes the same single task communication control routine for plural BRITE cards.

Channel bank with individually removable processorless U-BRITE cards

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

Robert James Toth