Cellular high capacity mobile radiotelephone system with fleet-calling arrangement for dispatch service

In a cellular mobile radiotelephone communication system having a control office (30) and including mobile units in different service regions of the system, the system being characterized in that

• there are provided in the control office
• a fan-out circuit (48, 49) having an input connection and plural output connections,
• means (43, 46, 47) for coupling the fan-out circuit input connection to receive signals from a first input/output connection of the control office,
• means (32) for coupling the fan-out circuit output connections to apply signals to respective connections for providing control office outputs, and
• means (32), including at least a part (46) of the fan-out circuit input coupling means, for bidirectionally coupling at least one additional input/output connection of said control office with said first input/output connection,
• a call control station (39) is provided for placing calls through said first input/output connection of the control office and by way of radio links to a plurality of mobile radiotelephone transceiver units (11, 12, 21, 22) of a group in a predetermined one or more service regions of said system,
• the fan-out circuit input and output coupling means includes first means (43, 46, 47, 48, 32) for coupling said station to one of said radio links (f.sub.FC10, f.sub.FC20) in each of said predetermined one or more regions, said first coupling means including means (48, 23) for restricting coupling to said radio links to unidirectional communication of message signals thereto, and
• the bidirectional coupling means includes second means (32) for coupling at least one further radio link (f.sub.RSP) of at least one of said predetermined regions through a part (43, 46) of said first coupling means for bidirectional communication of signals with said station.

In a cellular mobile radiotelephone communication system having a control office (30) and including mobile units in different service regions of the system, the system being characterized in that

• there are provided in the control office
• a fan-out circuit (48, 49) having an input connection and plural output connections,
• means (43, 46, 47,) for coupling the fan-out circuit input connection to receive signals from a first input/output connection to the control office,
• means (32) for coupling the fan-out circuit output connections to apply signals to respective connections for providing control office outputs, and
• means (32), including at least a part (46) of the fan-out circuit input coupling means, for bidirectionally coupling at least one additional input/output connection of said control office with said first input/output connection,
• said system includes means, coupled to said at least one additional input/output connection, for providing a bidirectional communication voice radio channel, and
• each of said mobile units further includes
• means (51), responsive to a mobile unit off-hook signal while said mobile unit is tuned to a voice channel (f.sub.FC10) in a listen-only mode, for retuning such unit to a system set-up channel and automatically sending a service request message, and
• means (51), responsive to a data message command received after said sending of said service request message and ordering the retuning of such mobile unit to said bidirectional communication voice radio channel, for so tuning such mobile unit to the latter channel.

In a cellular mobile radiotelephone system serving one or more geographical regions and in which all working mobile units (11, 12, 21, 22) listen for data messages addressed to them on a predetermined set-up channel for a region (10, 20) of the system serving each respective mobile unit, the method for communicating between a user of a mobile unit fleet control station and users of a fleet of mobile units included in said working mobile units, said method being characterized in that it comprises the steps of

• paging at least part of said fleet mobile units by a data message of said system set-up channel and initiated from said control station,
• directing all fleet mobile units in each of said one or more regions responding to the paging to retune to a fleet-listen channel (f.sub.FC10, f.sub.FC20) for that region,
• relaying a fleet-call message from the control station simultaneously to users of the fleet mobile units tuned to the fleet-listen channels,
• recognizing service request data message responses, to a fleet-call, from fleet mobile units on the respective system set-up channels, and directing, by data message, such responding mobile units to retune to respective bidirectional radiotelephone voice call channels (f.sub.RSP) in a conference connection with the fleet control station, and
• coupling all communications in said conference connection to the respective region fleet-listen channels.