Al-Mu'alla Central Office Summer Training Report

ACKNOWLEDMENTS
I would like to thank the following people for their help and cooperation in the
summer training: the staff at Al-Mu'alla central office for their help, and
patience; staff and teachers at the faculty of engineering for their
encouragement.
I would specially like to thank the students at the department of electronics and
communications, faculty of engineering, Aden for their help and contribution in
the development of this report, and Mr. Sameh for his help and advice.
Ibrahim Abdul-Hakim

Al-Mu'alla Central Office Summer Training Report

INTRODUCTION
Summer training is a good and successful way for students to get a good background
and practical information about their specialist, and also makes them know about their
specialist jobs.
This was my first summer training and it was in the public telecommunications
corporation, Al-Mu'alla central office, Aden.
Al-Mu'alla central office is considered to be one of the oldest and the most important
central offices in Yemen, since it is the main central office in the economical capital of
Yemen-Aden. All telephone exchanges in Aden districts are connected to each other
through it, and also it is their bridge to reach the telephone exchanges outside of the
province.

Figure1: A central office building.

In the first training day, we were told that we will not be helping the staff in their
serious works, but our mission will be only to see, ask, and listen. Their only excuse
for this was that because this is a very sensitive central office and any fail in any of its
units may cause a serious problem with the government and the national security.

Al-Mu'alla Central Office Summer Training Report

From our first tour we knew that the central office has various departments and
sections such as the switching department, where multiple digital switching systems
have been installed and are in service, transmission department, power supply
department, security department, customer services department, billing department,
etc...
Each of these departments has its own staff of engineers and technicians with one of
them promoted as a head for the department.
Most of the training was theoretic and incomplete, so that we had to read more about
some basics of communications from the World Wide Web (internet). We have not
studied any communication subjects yet, so that it was a little bit confusing for us.

How Telephone Calls Work

A calling party wishing to speak to another party will pick up the telephone's handset,
operating a
lever which
closes the
switchhook
(A4), which
powers the
telephone by
Figure 2: Schematic of a landline telephone installation.

connecting the

transmitter (microphone), receiver (speaker), and related audio components to the

line. The off-hook circuitry has a low resistance (less than 300 ohms) which causes a
direct current (DC), which comes down the line (C) from the telephone exchange. The
exchange detects this current, attaches a digit receiver circuit to the line, and sends a

Al-Mu'alla Central Office Summer Training Report

dial tone to indicate readiness. On a modern push-button telephone, the caller then
presses the number keys to send the telephone number of the called party. The keys
control a tone generator circuit that makes DTMF tones that the exchange receives. A
rotary-dial telephone uses pulse dialing, sending electrical pulses, that the exchange
can count to get the telephone number. If the called party's line is available, the
exchange sends an intermittent ringing signal (about 60~90 volts alternating current
AC) to alert the called party to an incoming call. If the called party's line is in use, the
exchange returns a busy signal to the calling party. However, if the called party's line
is in use but has call waiting installed, the exchange sends an intermittent audible tone
to the called party to indicate an incoming call.

The phone's ringer (A7) is connected to the line through a capacitor (A6), which
blocks direct current but passes alternating current. So, the phone draws no current
when it is on hook (a DC voltage is continually connected to the line), but exchange
circuitry (D2) can send an AC voltage down the line to ring for an incoming call.
(When there is no exchange, telephones often have hand-cranked magnetos to make
the ringing voltage.) When a landline phone is inactive or "on hook", the circuitry at
the telephone exchange detects the absence of direct current and therefore "knows"
that the phone is on hook (therefore, only AC current will go through) with only the
alerting device electrically connected to the line. When a party initiates a call to this
line, the exchange sends the ringing signal. When the called party picks up the
handset, they actuate a double-circuit switchhook which simultaneously disconnects
the alerting device and connects the audio circuitry to the line. This, in turn, draws
direct current through the line, confirming that the called phone is now active. The
exchange circuitry turns off the ring signal, and both phones are now active and

Al-Mu'alla Central Office Summer Training Report

connected through the exchange. The parties may now converse as long as both
phones remain off hook. When a party "hangs up", placing the handset back on the
cradle or hook, direct current ceases in that line, signaling the exchange to disconnect
the call.
Calls to parties beyond the local exchange are carried over "trunk" lines which
establish connections between exchanges. In modern telephone networks, fiber-optic
cable and digital technology are often employed in such connections. Satellite
technology may be used for communication over very long distances.
Today the end instrument often remains analog but the analog signals are typically
converted to digital signals at the central office.

In the past the exchange was a manual service, so to call a party, the customer lifts the
receiver off-hook and asks the operator to connect the call to a requested number.
Provided that the number is in the same central office, the operator connects the call
by plugging into the jack on the switchboard corresponding to the called customer's
line. If the call is to another central office, the operator plugs into the trunk for the
other office and asks the operator answering (known as the "inward" operator) to
connect the call.

Al-Mu'alla Central Office Summer Training Report

Chapter 1:

Switching Department
This is the operations room of the central office. It hosts the digital switches with their
accessories of terminals, alarming systems and maintaining equipments.
The staff of this department consists of communication engineers and communication
technicians with one of them promoted as a head for the department.
We visited this department in the first and the third weeks. In the switching
department there are various types and models of digital switching systems, such as
FETEX (Japanese), OCB (French), Huawei (Chinese), etc
Some of these switching systems are in service since the early 1990s and still living.
In the first day of the summer training, one the staff members led us in a tour inside
the department and showed us the Japanese switching system which is called FETEX
and it is a product of Fujitsu Company. The switches room was wide and cold in order
to achieve the stability requirements of the switching systems and the other systems in
the same room.

The CSN is the place where customer cards

are arranged and their data is stored. There are
two types of CSN:
1. CSNL, the subscribers cards are in
the same central office (local).
2. CSND, the subscribers cards are
distant from the central office.
Figure 3: CSN of the subscribers.

Al-Mu'alla Central Office Summer Training Report

The switching systems are running 24 hours a day, and they response to thousands of
telephone calls every minute, and due to these high processing, the temperature of
their heating sinks rapidly raise. To condition and stabilize the temperature of the
switches room, an air conditioning system is used. Otherwise the switching systems
will burn and get damaged.

Figure 4: A rack in the switching room.

Switches
Switch structure
The structure of a switch is an odd number of layers of smaller, simpler subswitches.
Each layer is interconnected by a web of wires that goes from each subswitch, to a set
of the next layer of subswitches. In most designs, a physical (space) switching layer
alternates with a time switching layer. The layers are symmetric, because in a
telephone system callers can also be callees.
A time-division subswitch reads a complete cycle of time slots into a memory, and
then writes it out in a different order, also under control of a cyclic computer memory.
This causes some delay in the signal.

Al-Mu'alla Central Office Summer Training Report

Electronic switches
The first Electronic Switching Systems were not entirely digital. Equipment testing,
changes to phone numbers, circuit lockouts and similar tasks were accomplished by
typing on a terminal. These systems could use the old electromechanical signaling
methods inherited from crossbar and step-by-step switches (Strowger).

Digital switches
Digital switches work by connecting two or more digital circuits together, according
to a dialed telephone number. Calls are set up between switches using the Signalling
System 7 protocol, or one of its variants. a digital switch is a switch that performs
time division switching of digitized signals. The first product using a digital switch
system was made by Amtelco. With few exceptions, most switches built since the
1980s are digital.

Maintenance tasks
In all systems, subscribers were not supposed to notice changes in quality of service
because of failures or maintenance work. A variety of tools referred to as make-busys
were plugged into electromechanical switch elements during repairs or failures. A
make-busy would identify the part being worked on as in-use, causing the switching
logic to route around it. A similar tool was called a TD tool. Subscribers who got
behind in payments would have their service temporarily denied (TDed). This was
effected by plugging a tool into the subscriber's office equipment (Crossbar) or line
group (step). The subscriber could receive calls but could not dial out.

Al-Mu'alla Central Office Summer Training Report

Chapter 2:

Transmission Department
The transmission department is the department where all incoming and outgoing
signals are maintained, sent, or received. Its staff consists of communication engineers
and communication technicians with their head.

In the last day of the training the third week, we were permitted to go to see this
department. In the second week we were fed with two lectures about transmission and
about few technologies used to transmit signals.

Figure 5: Snapshots from the transmission department.

Transmission Technologies
There are many technologies used in signals transmission such as the PDH
technology, SDH, DWDM, etc

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Al-Mu'alla Central Office Summer Training Report

PDH Technology
The Plesiochronous Digital Hierarchy is a technology used in telecommunications
networks to transport large quantities of data over digital transport equipment such as
fibre optic and microwave radio systems. The PDH networks run in a state where
different parts of the network are nearly, but not quite perfectly, synchronised.
PDH allows transmission of data streams that are nominally running at the same rate,
but allowing some variation on the speed around a nominal rate.
PDH is typically being replaced by Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) or
Synchronous optical networking (SONET) equipment in most telecommunications
networks.

Figure 6: Multiplexing block diagram.

Multiplexing in signals transmission case

Figure 7: Multiplexing block diagram.

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Al-Mu'alla Central Office Summer Training Report

In PDH, Multiplexing is done on transmission and Demultiplexing is done on

reception.

SDH Technology
The Synchronous Digital Hierarchy is a standard technology for synchronous data
transmission on optical media. It is the international equivalent of Synchronous
Optical Network. Both technologies provide faster and less expensive network
interconnection than traditional PDH (Plesiochronous Digital Hierarchy) equipment.
In digital telephone transmission, "synchronous" means the bits from one call are
carried within one transmission frame. "Plesiochronous" means "almost (but not)
synchronous," or a call that must be extracted from more than one transmission frame.

The SDH technology is more advanced than PDH because it supports remote
monitoring and maintenance and overcomes the withdraws of the SDH technology in
the number of channels. It is also more efficient and it supports line and ring
connections between different exchange centrals.
An OTDR is a maintenance device which is used to determine breaks in the fiberoptic cables, it determine at which distance is the break from a maintaining place.

DWDM Technology
We did not learn about the DWDM transmission technology, but some of its features
are that it uses one optical fiber cable for transmission and reception, and it dose not
need to multiplex before transmitting.

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Al-Mu'alla Central Office Summer Training Report

Pulse-code modulation (PCM)

Pulse-code modulation (PCM) is a method used to digitally represent sampled
analog signals. It is the standard form for digital audio in computers and various
Blu-ray, Compact Disc and DVD formats, as well as other uses such as digital
telephone systems. A PCM stream is a digital representation of an analog signal, in
which the magnitude of the analogue signal is sampled regularly at uniform intervals,
with each sample being quantized to the nearest value within a range of digital steps.
PCM streams have two basic properties that determine their fidelity to the original
analog signal: the sampling rate, which is the number of times per second that
samples are taken; and the bit depth, which determines the number of possible digital
values that each sample can take.

Figure 8: Sampling and quantization of a

signal (red) for 4-bit PCM.

Figure 9: 2Mbit PCM frame with 32 time slots.

Time slot (0) is used for the FAW (Frame alignment word), or for alarm,
time slot (16) is used to determine the signaling system or protocol used.

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Al-Mu'alla Central Office Summer Training Report

The number of channels in the PCM determines the maximum number of telephone
calls it can handle at a specific moment. In 2Mbit frame the maximum telephone calls
that can be handled at a specific moment are 30, because time slot 0 and time slot 16
are allocated for FAW and the signaling protocol respectively.
Signaling System 7 (SS7) is the standard protocol currently used between most
exchange centrals.
Each time slot contains 8 bits, then
Total bits of frame = 8 bits x 32 time slots = 256 bits
Frame duration = 256 bit / 2 Mb = 125 us
Frequency = 1 / T = 1 / 125 us = 8 KHz
One time slot duration = 125 / 32 = 3.9us
Bit rate = 1/488 = 2,048 bits

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Al-Mu'alla Central Office Summer Training Report

Chapter 3:

Power Supply Department

The exchange central services must be online twenty four hours a day and seven days
a week without any interruption in its state. So that, there has to be a stable source of
power supplying the central office rooms, switches, devices and conditioning systems.

To achieve this stability, there are multiple solutions used in parallel to avoid any
interruption in the power supplying the central. These solutions are as follows:
1. Public electricity service.
2. Standby power generators.
3. UPS systems.

Public electricity service:

It is the electricity provided by the government electricity service company, or
by any electricity service provider.

Standby power generators:

They are power generators which are used as an alternate source of power in
case the public electricity service is urgently switched off. They are usually operated
using fuel such as petrol and diesel.

UPS systems:
Uninterruptible Power Supply are smart UPS systems which function is to
keep the central most important devices online in case the power is urgently switched
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Al-Mu'alla Central Office Summer Training Report

off. A series of efficient batteries are installed with the UPS systems to increase its
power capacity. Inverters are used with the UPS systems in case an AC power source
is required.
The central switching devices require about 48-54VDC, so that they get their power
either from the rectified AC power (Public electricity service, or standby power
generators), or from the UPS systems in case of emergency. Both rectified AC source
and UPS systems source are parallelized to the central DC loads.

Public
electricity
service

Central AC
loads

Inversion

Rectification

Standby
power
generators

Central DC
loads

UPS
systems
Figure 10: Power system block diagram of the central.

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SUMMARY
This summer training showed us that the technical experience is the key in the
operation of the exchange centrals in Yemen. All the problems are either solved using
the terminal command line (console) in case it is a software issue, or by replacing
some electronic cards in case it is a hardware issue. Every thing is ready and there is
no chance for engineers and technician to create, repair, or even make new solutions.

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Al-Mu'alla Central Office Summer Training Report

FIGURES LIST
Figure

Page

Figure1: A central office building.

Figure 2: Schematic of a landline telephone installation.

Figure 3: CSN of the subscribers.

Figure 4: A rack in the switching room.

Figure 5: Snapshots from the transmission department.

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Figure 6: Multiplexing block diagram.

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Figure 7: Multiplexing block diagram.

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Figure 8: Sampling and quantization of a signal (red) for 4-bit PCM.

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Figure 9: 2Mbit PCM frame with 32 time slots.

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Figure 10: Power system block diagram of the central.

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Al-Mu'alla Central Office Summer Training Report

REFERENCES
- Gnanasivam, P. 2006. Telecommunications, Switching, And
Networks, 2nd edition. New Age International Publishers.
- Wikipedia. The online encyclopedia. http://www.wikipedia.com.
- Google images service.
- Definitions from Whatis.com.

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