Patent attributes
At a transmit site of an inverse multiplexing system, an input demultiplexer demultiplexes high bandwidth serial communication signals (e.g., fractional T3 rate signals) into communication signal packets for transmission over reduced bandwidth serial communication (e.g. T1) channels. A multiplexer for each channel combines successive packets of demultiplexed signals with bits of multibit packet reassembly control words that identify the channel and the order in which communication signal packets have been demultiplexed, to produce successive frames for transmission over the channel. At a receiver site the control words are extracted from the frames of data and analyzed to control reassembly of the serial data packets into their original order.