Digital switching system

Abstract

A digital switching system capable of changing switching capacity without any recourse of increasing or decreasing the quantities of line terminals or cross-point switches. The digital switching system comprises line terminals which send and receive data as serial data to and from the user, a switching arrangement which switches, based on destination information, the parallel data converted from the serial data, and data converters capable of converting between the serial data and the parallel data at a specified conversion ratio. The serial/parallel converter circuit of a serial/parallel converter in a digital switching system comprises a 1:4 transceiver, four variable converters, and 16 selector circuits The 1:4 transceiver converts serial data into 4-bit wide parallel data and sends the parallel data to the variable converters. If mode selection information specifies a conversion ratio of 1:4, only a tristate buffer is enabled and 4-bit wide parallel data is output. When the conversion ratio is 1:8 or 1:16, only a tristate buffer is enabled, respectively, and 8-bit wide or 16-bit wide parallel data is output, respectively.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.