CELLULAR SYSTEM ARCHITECTURES SUPPORTING DATA SERVICES

摘要

The present invention relates to a cellular communication system that is comprised of a plurality of base stations and radio ports that communicate over an air interface with a plurality of terminal devices, where the radio ports have asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) interfaces. A cellular switch is provided having circuit-switching fabric and vocoders, where the base stations are connected to the circuit-switching fabric by first communications links, and where the circuit-switching fabric is also connected to a public switched telephone network (PSTN). A cellular call control processor is associated with the cellular switch, that handles a voice call routed through the cellular switch. A digital cellular switch (DCS) having ATM fabric and radio link protocol processors is also provided, where the circuit switching fabric is connected to the ATM fabric by a second communications link via a converter that converts between the transmission format of the first communications links and ATM, the ATM fabric being connected to the radio ports by ATM virtual links. One or more standard hardware platforms implement ATM transport that perform a plurality of call control functions including the handling of data calls from/to the base stations and radio ports. A network interworking module interfaces the DCS toa communications network.