1.What is SPC?

Stored program control used for implementing many innovative user services and simplify the switch maintenance. 2.What is telecommunication? Telecommunications is the transfer of information from a transmitter to a receiver over a distance 3.Define the term Switching. Switches establish, maintain, and change connectivity between circuits In order to do so. 4.What is meant by signaling? In order for the network to function properly, the various components and elements must have the ability to signal each other to indicate status and condition. Signaling can be either: In-band: takes place over the same physical path as the conversation and occupy the same channel Out-of-band: takes place over a separate channel or physical path as the conversation 5.What is Electronic switching? The use of computers to control the switching functions of a central office is called Electronic switching.

1. What are the basic functions that all Switching Systems must perform? The switching office performs the following basic functions irrespective of the system whether it is a manual or electromechanical or electronic switching system. 1. Identity. The local switching center must react to a calling signal from calling subscriber and must be able to receive information to identify the required destination terminal seize. 2. Addressing. The switching system must be able to identify the called subscriber from the input information 3. Finding and path setup. Once the calling subscriber destination is identified and the called subscriber is available, an accept signal is passed to the switching system and calling subscriber. Based on the availability, suitable path will be selected. 4. Busy testing. If number dialled by the calling subscriber is wrong or the called subscriber is busy (not attending the phone) or the terminal may be free (lifting the phone) but no response (not willing to talk or children handling), a switching system has to pass a corresponding voice message or busy tone after waiting for some time (status).

5. Supervision. Once the path is setup between calling and called subscriber, it should be supervised in order to detect answer and clear down conditions and recording billing information. 6. Clear down. When the established call is completed, the path setup should be disconnected. If the calling subscriber keeps the phone down first, the signal called clear forward is passed to the switching system. If the called subscriber keeps the phone down first, a signal called clear backward signal is passed to the switching system. By clear signal, the switching system must disconnect the path setup between calling and called subscriber. 7. Billing. A switching system should have a mechanism to meter to count the number of units made during the conversation. The cumulative number of units made for a particular duration by the calling subscriber is calculated. This information and if any should be sent to the called subscriber.

TOUCH TONE DIAL TELEPHONE In a rotary dial telephone, it takes about 12 seconds to dial, 7-digit number. From the subscriber point of view, a faster dialing rate is desirable. The step-by-step switching elements of Strowger systems cannot respond to rates higher than 10-12 pulses per second. With the introduction of common control in crossbar systems, a higher dialing rate is feasible. It is also of advantage as the common equipment, while not tied up for the duration of a call, is nonetheless unavailable to respond to a new call until it has received and processed all the digits of an earlier call. Pulse dialing is limited to signaling between the exchange and the subscriber and no signaling is possible end-toend, i.e. between two subscribers. End-to-end signaling is a desirable feature and is possible only if the signaling is in the voice frequency band so that the signaling information can be transmitted to any point in the telephone network to which voice can be transmitted. Rotary dial signaling 10 distinct signals, whereas a higher number would enhance signaling capability significantly. Finally, a more convenient method of signaling than rotary dialing is preferable from the point of view of human factors. These considerations led to the development of touch tone dial telephones in the 1950s, which were introduced first in 1964 after field trials. They are increasingly replacing rotary dial telephones all over the world.

Fig 3: Touch Dial Arrangement The touch tone dialing scheme is shown in Fig. 3. The rotary dial is replaced by a push button keyboard. Touching a button generates a tone which is a combination of two frequencies, one from the lower band and the other from the upper band. For example, pressing the push button 9 transits 852 Hz and 1477 Hz. An extended design provides for an additional frequency 1633 Hz in the upper band, and can produce 16 distinct signals. This design is used only in military and other special applications. Another design, known as decadic push button type, uses a push button dial in place of rotary dial but gives out decadic pulses when a button is pressed as in the case of rotary dial telephone. Design Considerations The need for touch tone signaling frequencies to be in the voice band brings with it the problems of vulnerability to talk-off which means that the speech signals may be mistaken for touch tone signals and unwanted control actions such as terminating a call may occur. Another aspect of talk-off is that the speech signal may interfere with the touch tone signaling if the subscriber happens to talk while signaling is being attempted. The main design considerations for touch tone signaling stem from the need for protection against talk-off and include the following factors: 1. Choice of code 2. Band Separation 3. Choice of frequencies 4. Choice of power levels

5. Signaling duration. In addition to these, human factors and mechanical aspects also require consideration. The choice of code for touch tone signaling should be such that imitation of code signals by speech and music should be difficult. Simple single frequency structures are prone to easy imitation as they occur frequently in speech or music. Hence some form of multifrequency code is required. Such codes are easily derived by selecting a set of N frequencies and restricting them in a binary fashion to being either present or absent in a code combination. However, some of the 2N combinations are not useful as they contain only one frequency. Transmitting simultaneously N frequencies involves N-fold sharing of a restricted amplitude range, and hence it is desirable to keep as small as possible the number of frequencies to be transmitted simultaneously. It is also advantageous to keep fixed the number of frequencies to be transmitted for any valid code word. These factors lead to the consideration of P-out-of-N code. Here a combination of P frequencies out of N frequencies constitutes a code word. The code yields N!P! (N-P)! code words. Prior to touch tone, P-out-ofN multifrequency signaling, known as multifrequency key pulsing (MFKP), was used between telephone exchanges by the operators. Here, 2-out-of-6 code was used. This code is known to give a talk-off performance of less than 1 in 5000. However, this degree of talk-off performance is inadequate for subscriber level signaling. In order to improve the performance, two measures are adopted. Firstly, while retaining P as two, N is chosen to be seven or eight, depending upon the number of code words desired. Secondly, the chosen frequencies are place in two separate bands, and a restriction is applied such that one frequency from each band is chosen to form a code word. When multiple frequencies are present in speech signal, they are closely spaced. Band separation of touch tone frequencies reduces the probability of speech being able to produce touch tone combinations. The number of valid combinations is now limited to N1 x N2, where N1 and N2 represent the number of frequencies in each band. With seven frequencies, four in one band and three in the other, we have 12 distinct signals as represented by the push buttons in Fig. 3.3 With eight frequencies, four in each band, we have 16 possible combinations. Since two frequencies are mixed from a set of seven or eight frequencies, CCITT referes to the touch tone scheme by the name dual tone multifrequency (DTMF) signaling. Band separation of the two frequencies has the following advantages: 1. Before attempting to determine the two specific frequencies at the receiver end, band filtering can be used to separate the frequency groups. This renders determination of specific frequencies simpler. 2. Each frequency component can be amplitude regulated separately. 3. Extreme instantaneous limiters which are capable of providing substantial guard action can be used for each frequency separately to reduce the probability of false response to speech or other unwanted signals.

PRINCIPLES OF CROSSBAR SWITCHING The basic idea of crossbar switching is to provide a matrix of n x m sets of contacts with only n + m activators or less to select one of the n x m sets of contacts. This form of switching is also known as coordinate switching as the switching contacts are arranged in a xy-plane. A diagrammatic representation of a cross point switching matrix is shown in Fig. 6. There is an array of horizontal and vertical wires shown by solid lines. A set of vertical and horizontal contact points are connected to these wires. The contact points form pairs, each pair consisting of a bank of three or four horizontal and a corresponding bank of vertical contact points. A contact point pair acts as a cross point switch and remains separated or open when not in use. The contact points are mechanically mounted (and electrically insulated) on a set of horizontal and vertical bars shown as dotted lines. The bars, in turn, are attached to a set of electromagnets.

Fig 6: Crossbar Switching Matrix When an electromagnet, say in the horizontal direction, is energized, the bar attached to it slightly rotates in such a way that the contact points attached to the bar move closer to its facing contact points but do not actually make any contact. Now, if an

electromagnet in the vertical direction is intersect in of the two bars to close. This happens because the contact points move towards each other. As an example, if electromagnets m2 and M3 are energized, a contact is established at the cross point 6 such that the subscriber B is connected to the subscriber C. In order to fully understand the working of the crossbar switching, let us consider a 6 x 6 crossbar schematic shown in Fig. 7. The schematic shows six subscribers with the horizontal bars representing the inlets and the vertical bars the outlets. Now consider the establishment of the following connections in sequence: A to C and B to E.

Outlets Fig 7 : 6 x6 crossbar matrix First the horizontal bar A is energized. Then the vertical bar C is energized. The crosspoint AC is latched and the conversation between A and C can now proceed. Suppose we now energise the horizontal bar of B to establish the connection B-E, the crosspoint BC may latch and B will be brought into the circuit of A-C. this is prevented by introducing an energizing sequence for latching the crosspoints. A crosspoint latches only if the horizontal bar is energized first and then the vertical bar. (The sequence may well be that the crosspoint BC will not latch even though the vertical bar C is energized as the proper sequence is not maintained. In order to establish the connection B-E, the vertical bar E needs to be energized after the horizontal bar is energized. In this case, the crosspoint AE may latch as the horizontal bar A has already been energized for establishing the connection A-C. this should also be avoided and is done by deenergised immediately after the crosspoint AC is latched, the crosspoint AE does not latch when the vertical bar E is energized. Thus the procedur4 for establishing a connection in a crossbar switch may be summarized as:

Energise horizontal bar energise vertical bar Energise vertical bar or energise horizontal bar d-energise horizontal bar de-energise vertical bar

CENTRALIZED SWITCHING SYSTEM Distributed Method A simplest way of structuring the telecommunication switching is the terminal-toterminal connection. This kind of switching is called distributed switching and applied only to small telephone system. Some examples of distributed switching are shown here. Fig. 1.5 shows the full interconnection of five terminals.

Each terminal have two kind of switches, one to make required link and other to connect a link to receive a call. By this method, for N terminals, the numbers of links required are 1/2 N(N 1) Fig. 1.6 shows the interconnection of four terminals but only with 4(N) links. Here each terminal is connected permanently to one channel and all other terminals may be accessed by operating a switch. Also it removes the need to connect a terminal to a link for an incoming call.

Centralised Model. The distributed system cannot be extended to large terminal cases and the increased geographical separation of terminals. A simple centralized system, which reduces the average length of transmission link, and hence the transmission cost is shown in Fig. 1.8. But this system increases the total switching costs. Introducing more local centers instead of one national center switching machine can further reduce the transmission cost. Two local centers are connected by links called trunk. A trunk in telephone system is a communication path that contains shared circuits that are used to interconnect central offices. Fig. 1.9 shows the telecommunication system for short distances, with two exchanges (switching offices).

Fig. 1.9. Short distance centralised system. Even though the increase in the number of switching centers lower the total transmission costs, the total switching cost tend to increase for two reasons. 1. The local centers become more complex because they must be able to decide on a suitable routing to another center. 2. Economy of scale is lost with an increased number of local centers because of additional numbers.