Patent ID: 8126492

Claim:
An improved vehicle crew communications system comprising: a. a vehicle capable of carrying a crew, such crew comprising a plurality of human crew members who are users of said system; b. at least one base station coupled to said vehicle; c. an intercom communicatively coupled to said at least one base station via a microphone input in said intercom and also communicatively coupled to at least one radio; d. at least one wireless headset wirelessly communicatively coupled via a wireless TDMA link to a particular one base station of said at least one base station; e. wherein the improvements comprise: i. increase in number of said at least one wireless headset usable at once with one base station of said at least one base station; ii. increase in a distance from said vehicle at which said at least one wireless headset is operable; iii. full duplex communication over digitally encrypted DECT protocol links from one said base station; iv. pairing of each particular headset of said at least one wireless headset to a particular base station of said at least one base station; v. wireless communications within and exterior to said vehicle; vi. automatic slot and channel selection to avoid interference, wherein said selection is transparent to said users; vii. removal of the need to manually select the channel for said at least one wireless headset; and viii. a noise-cancelling microphone with noise threshold, noise attenuation, and line echo cancellation tuned to parameters of said intercom.