Patent ID: 7970003

Claim:
A telemetry system comprising: a bus; a plurality of channels each coupled to the bus; and a control subsystem for (1) controlling the channels so that each one presents to the bus, during a time period designated for the channel, a channel characteristic representative of a signal sampled by the channel, (2) interrogating in an analog domain, during the time period designated for the channel, the characteristic presented by the channel, and (3) forming a signal representative of the characteristic presented by the channel during the designated time period; wherein the control subsystem comprises a termination device at one end of the bus; wherein the control subsystem further comprises a distributed control element at each of the channels; wherein the distributed control element in a channel identifies the time period designated for the channel within a cycle; wherein the termination device clocks each of the distributed control elements through a clocking signal sent over the bus; wherein each of the distributed control elements comprises a timing element which is updated responsive to the clocking signal, and the distributed control element identifies the time period designated for the channel based on a comparison of timing element contents with a predetermined value for the channel.