The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
May. 21, 2002
Filed:
May. 29, 1998
Paul B. Patton, Rockford, MN (US);
Honeywell International Inc., Morristown, NJ (US);
Abstract
A method and system for allowing multiple local simple communication buses to be selectively and separately connected as part of a larger, global communication bus. This interconnection is done transparently to the local buses, which may continue to operate autonomously and employ readily available and low cost devices based on time division multiplexing (TDM) protocol. A number of such TDM local buses are each provided with a switching device. A global bus and controller connects to each of the local bus switching devices. By uniquely addressing each switching device, the global controller can receive and transmit on any selected local bus, and issue commands to specific devices thereon. In a rapid fault polling mode, each local bus switching device is commanded to check its local bus devices for fault codes, and signal the presence thereof to the global controller, which can then access the local bus(es) which have the faults.