Circuit arrangement for accepting and forwarding message cells with an ATM communication equipment

A circuit arrangement for forwarding message cells supplied to ATM communication equipment operating according to an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) during virtual connections via at least one offering trunk to a respective serving trunk according to a respective virtual connection, said message cells respectively carrying call information that indicates the respective virtual connection, characteristic parameters for the respective virtual connection being determined during a call setup, a message cell stream to be transmitted being defined by said parameters and one of at least two different priorities being determined by at least one of said characteristic parameters, and at least the respective serving trunk arrangement having an associated handling device supplied with intended message streams, with which forwarding of message cells is controlled according to a criterion of priorities allocated to individual virtual connections, comprising:

• a handling device having a cell memory in which call-associated cell waiting lists are established for storing message cells respectively belonging to the virtual connections;
• a control device connected to the cell memory, said control device having an allocation table with which the call information of the message cells to be stored are in each case allocated to a waiting list identifier indicating the cell waiting list coming in consideration for a respective message cell and a priority identifier;
• switching means for inserting the waiting list identifier, based on a priority identifier provided by the allocation table, into a reference waiting list allocated to the respective priority;
• processing means for processing of individual reference waiting lists ensuing with different priorities in that a waiting list identifier pending for processing is only taken from a reference waiting list having a specific priority when at least one reference waiting list having higher priority is empty;
• the control device, responding to the taking of a respective waiting list identifier, supplying the cell memory with an address information corresponding to the respective waiting list identifier for forwarding of a message cell stored in the respective cell waiting list, said handling device having:
• a first signal path containing the cell memory;
• a memory device containing the allocation table at a branch point of the input side of the first signal path, the memory cells of said memory device being randomly addressable by address signals corresponding to call information of the message cells and providing, in response to a selection, a waiting list identifier respectively stored therein as well as a priority identifier;
• waiting list identifiers offered by said memory device being respectively supplied in parallel to further signal paths allocated to the different priorities, only one of said allocated signal paths being enabled via a first switch device according to the criterion of the priority identifier allocated to the respective waiting list identifier;
• at least one reference waiting list for the acceptance of waiting list identifiers is located in each of the further signal paths;
• the further signal paths being merged at the output side;
• and
• a signal path allocated to a specific priority being enabled by a signal path of high priority via a second switch device to output waiting list identifiers stored in the appertaining reference waiting list.