A communication system comprising: a main bus adapted to operate in accordance with a standard limited to a linear topology; a bus controller coupled to the main bus and configured to send and receive messages on the main bus; a first remote terminal coupled to the main bus and configured to send and receive messages on the main bus including the messages sent by the bus controller; a repeater coupled to the main bus and configured to send and receive messages on the main bus including the messages sent by the bus controller and by the first remote terminal; and second and third remote terminals (22,26) coupled to the repeater, wherein the second and third remote terminals (22,26) are adapted to send and receive messages on the main bus via the repeater; the communication system being characterized in that: the repeater includes: an arbiter; a first encoder/decoder unit for interfacing the repeater to the main bus; a second encoder/decoder unit for interfacing the repeater to the second remote terminal (22,26); and a third encoder/decoder unit for interfacing the repeater to the third remote terminal (22,26), the expression encoder/decoder unit meaning a unit configured to encode a received signal into a digital token and to decode a digital token into a digital signal, the expression digital token meaning a digital representation of a message sent by an element in the communication system that is understood by the repeater and used by the arbiter to control the direction, encoding or decoding, of the encoders/decoder, wherein the arbiter is coupled to each of the first, second, and third encoder/decoder units and is configured to control the encoding and decoding by the first, second and third encoder/decoder units. a main bus adapted to operate in accordance with a standard limited to a linear topology; a bus controller coupled to the main bus and configured to send and receive messages on the main bus; a first remote terminal coupled to the main bus and configured to send and receive messages on the main bus including the messages sent by the bus controller; a repeater coupled to the main bus and configured to send and receive messages on the main bus including the messages sent by the bus controller and by the first remote terminal; and second and third remote terminals (22,26) coupled to the repeater, wherein the second and third remote terminals (22,26) are adapted to send and receive messages on the main bus via the repeater; the communication system being characterized in that: the repeater includes: an arbiter; a first encoder/decoder unit for interfacing the repeater to the main bus; a second encoder/decoder unit for interfacing the repeater to the second remote terminal (22,26); and a third encoder/decoder unit for interfacing the repeater to the third remote terminal (22,26), the expression encoder/decoder unit meaning a unit configured to encode a received signal into a digital token and to decode a digital token into a digital signal, the expression digital token meaning a digital representation of a message sent by an element in the communication system that is understood by the repeater and used by the arbiter to control the direction, encoding or decoding, of the encoders/decoder, wherein the arbiter is coupled to each of the first, second, and third encoder/decoder units and is configured to control the encoding and decoding by the first, second and third encoder/decoder units. the repeater includes: an arbiter; a first encoder/decoder unit for interfacing the repeater to the main bus; a second encoder/decoder unit for interfacing the repeater to the second remote terminal (22,26); and a third encoder/decoder unit for interfacing the repeater to the third remote terminal (22,26), an arbiter; a first encoder/decoder unit for interfacing the repeater to the main bus; a second encoder/decoder unit for interfacing the repeater to the second remote terminal (22,26); and a third encoder/decoder unit for interfacing the repeater to the third remote terminal (22,26), the expression encoder/decoder unit meaning a unit configured to encode a received signal into a digital token and to decode a digital token into a digital signal, the expression digital token meaning a digital representation of a message sent by an element in the communication system that is understood by the repeater and used by the arbiter to control the direction, encoding or decoding, of the encoders/decoder, wherein the arbiter is coupled to each of the first, second, and third encoder/decoder units and is configured to control the encoding and decoding by the first, second and third encoder/decoder units.