Toward a More Accurate Measure of the Cost of Living

A digital speech interpolation (DSI) system advantageously utilizes speech inactivity time to reduce the bit rate by compressing digital characters from a plurality of trunks onto a lesser plurality of channels. A signaling arrangement is typically employed therein to signal a receiver as to the activity of a trunk. If the number of active trunks exceeds the number of channels, an overload may exist. Known arrangements for mitigating overload typically include apparatus responsive to an activity signal for truncating one or more bits from the digital characters and for transmitting the truncated characters. Unfortunately, quantization noise is increased and digital precision decreased in such arrangements. The hereindisclosed system includes an improved automatically adaptive arrangement for advantageously incorporating nearly instantaneous companding (NIC) and priority trunk rotation in a plurality of frames, called a multiframe. Thereby, a mitigation of overload as well as a lessening of quantization noise relative to known DSI arrangements is attained.

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