Control center for a communications system with interchannel patching

Abstract

A radio communication system of base stations, and a telephone system, are linked and controlled by a control center. A housing having a plurality of control modules electrically and mechanically engaged therein, each control module having a front panel with a patch switch and a plurality of indicators thereon, the control modules each adapted to be connected to a transmitter/receiver base station for receiving all communications to and from the base station on an associated communications channel and controlling the operation of the base station, a plurality of buses mounted in the housing and a patch board on each of said modules for electrically connecting any of said modules to said buses upon operation of the patch switch on said module, a phone patch module mounted in the housing and adapted to be coupled to a pair of telephone lines and including a switch for patching any communications channel to the telephone lines upon operation of the switches in the control module for the communications channel and in the phone patch, an operator module mounted in the housing and including a monitor speaker, microphone, and push-to-talk switch and associated circuitry connecting the aforesaid to audio and push-to-talk buses in the housing, and a patch tone encoder module mounted in the housing and supplying a plurality of tones on a tone encoder bus, said tones being utilized by predetermined ones of said control modules to control the base station.