TIDES: A TIME-DIVISION ELECTRONIC SWITCHING SYSTEM USING INTEGRATED CONTROL.

A military circuit switching system must have the ability to handle emergency situations in which a large percentage of its circuits are simultaneously active. In devising schemes to implement switching systems, private industry recognizes this situation to the extent of providing rapid, sophisticated common control equipment to process calls. It appears, however, that insufficient attention has been given to integrating the call processing functions with the more elementary crosspoint control functions, with the aim of creating an integrated switching module. This module would stand virtually on its own, containing switching matrix, crosspoint control logic, and call processing logic. Implementation of a circuit switching system then would consist of interconnecting the requisite number of modules. This report describes the integrated switching module, and details the operation of the module and of a suggested circuit switching system containing several such modules. Included are discussions of some important system features and their impact on the basic approach, such as conference calls, hot line operation, long distance switching, saturation signalling, and other supervisory and monitoring capabilities incorporating call transfer, change of address, and trunk hunting. Author