Patent ID: 7126953

Claim:
An interface between an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) network and a public switched telephone network (PSTN), comprising: an ATM interface that communicates an ATM cell signal from and to the ATM network; a vocoder that communicates a voice signal from and to the PSTN by a channel; and a time division multiplex (TDM) bus that communicates a voice traffic signal between the ATM interface and the vocoder, wherein the ATM interface comprises a TDM interface that communicates the voice traffic signal with the vocoder over the TDM bus, synchronously with TDM timing, the TDM interface comprising: an aligner that phase-aligns the voice traffic signal from a multiplex/demultiplex unit in synchronization with the TDM timing, phase-aligns the voice traffic signal from the vocoder in synchronization with the TDM timing, and outputs the phase-aligned voice traffic signal from the vocoder to the multiplex/demultiplex unit; and a parallel/serial converter that converts first parallel voice traffic signals from the aligner into a first serial voice traffic signal, outputs the converted first serial voice traffic signal to the TDM bus, converts a second serial voice traffic signal sent over the TDM bus into second parallel voice traffic signals and outputs the second converted parallel voice traffic signals to the aligner.