Gennady Shtirmer

Bellcore's large screen teleconferencing prototype

Bellcores large screen teleconferencing prototype is the realization of a service concept for informal video and audio communication, which can be augmented with visual aids and shared computer applications, between areas where people congregate and interact. It consists of a large video display set into a wall at each location. The display is illuminated by a reverse-scanned video projector hidden behind the wall. An inventive audio system provides wideband (7-kHz) sound with complete freedom for simultaneous hands-free talking (and listening) at each installation.<<ETX>>

Design of a SONET/ATM-based optical customer premises network

A novel optical customer premises network (CPN), H-Bus, has been designed to interface future B-ISDN (broadband integrated services digital network) signals and distribute available bandwidth to terminal equipment connected to the CPN. Key features of this network are the use of optical fiber as transmission medium, and a hybrid architecture, namely a broadcast bus for the downstream traffic (network interface to subscriber terminal to network interface). The physical layer of the network makes use of the synchronous optical network (SONET) transmission format. The user information is carried using the asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) technique. The reliability of H-Bus is improved through the use of a new optical element to protect the CPN in the case of terminal failures. To resolve any access contention on the upstream bus, a new media-access control protocol has been designed to effectively achieve fairness.<<ETX>>