Bell Telephone Laboratories

Stanley Leon Freeny

James C Candy

William Herbert Ninke

Arthur B Larsen

Thomas J Pedersen

Communication between a plurality of data terminals (101(1) to 101(b)) serially interconnected with a main terminal (102) is provided by data frames or packets having a data portion for accommodating a burst of data preceeded by a header portion for accommodating address data followed by an empty/full 'flag' bit indicating whether the addressee station has withdrawn the data burst. If a terminal has a data burst to send, it locates an empty packet, inserts the addressee designation in the packet subsequent to any prior address that the packet might contain, interposes delay in the passage therethrough of the packet so that the duration is increased to accommodate the new address and overwrites the data burst into the data portion. The main terminal detects when the data burst is withdrawn and signals the originating terminal to remove the data delay.

Ring communication system data packets reusable a variable number of

Digital character signals are split into at least two bit groups of different binary significance. The first and most significant of the bit groups is registered and periodically sampled for conversion in a resistor network to an analog format. The bits of the second, or least significant, bit group are utilized to produce a signal train including in a character time a number of pulses determined by the value of the second bit group and which pulses are approximately evenly located in the interval of the character. Each pulse of the train, as it occurs, momentarily augments the most significant bit group. One embodiment is shown in which the signal train produced is successive overflow carries from a high speed accumulation operation initially utilizing the least significant bit group and a starting character and thereafter using the least significant bit group and the immediately preceding accumulation sum. In another embodiment the signal train is produced by a binary rate multiplier, and the least significant bit group is employed to select one of the plural multiplier output frequencies. Embodiments utilizing time compression are also shown.

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Middletown, NJ, United States of America

Stanley Leon Freeny