Importance

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Abstract

A communication system in which many terminals located in a large room are connected to a host via a plurality of satellites. Data are exchanged between terminals and satellites by infrared signals. All satellites are connected to the host by a common bus arrangement comprising a data line (13) and a synchronization line (15). Each satellite generates a synchronized carrier and modulates it by the downlink data received from the host in a modulator (17). Each terminal may receive overlapping signals from several satellites without disturbance. Uplink data transmitted from any terminal are stored as packet in a buffer (55) of one or more satellites so that they can be transferred to the host subsequently via the bus arrangement. Each satellite has means (63) for comparing any transferred uplink packet to a packet still stored in its buffer so that any packet is transferred only once to the host and doubly stored packets are eliminated.

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First Claim