
The AXE telephone exchange is a product line of
circuit switched
Circuit switching is a method of implementing a telecommunications network in which two network nodes establish a dedicated communications channel ( circuit) through the network before the nodes may communicate. The circuit guarantees the full ...
digital
telephone exchange
A telephone exchange, telephone switch, or central office is a central component of a telecommunications system in the public switched telephone network (PSTN) or in large enterprises. It facilitates the establishment of communication circuits ...
s manufactured by
Ericsson
(), commonly known as Ericsson (), is a Swedish multinational networking and telecommunications company headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. Ericsson has been a major contributor to the development of the telecommunications industry and is one ...
, a Swedish telecom company. It was developed in 1974 by
Ellemtel, a
research and development
Research and development (R&D or R+D), known in some countries as OKB, experiment and design, is the set of innovative activities undertaken by corporations or governments in developing new services or products. R&D constitutes the first stage ...
subsidiary of Ericsson and
Televerket. The first system was deployed in 1976. AXE is not an
acronym
An acronym is a type of abbreviation consisting of a phrase whose only pronounced elements are the initial letters or initial sounds of words inside that phrase. Acronyms are often spelled with the initial Letter (alphabet), letter of each wor ...
, but an Ericsson product code.
The AXE is the digital successor to the AKE analogue telephone exchange and ARF/ARM family of
crossbar switch
In electronics and telecommunications, a crossbar switch (cross-point switch, matrix switch) is a collection of switches arranged in a Matrix (mathematics), matrix configuration. A crossbar switch has multiple input and output lines that form a ...
es. The design is modular with an APZ dual processor running in sync mode, an APT switching part and an APG I/O part. It is used for connecting local
landline
A landline is a physical telephone connection that uses metal wires or optical fiber from the subscriber's premises to the network, allowing multiple phones to operate simultaneously on the same phone number. It is also referred to as plain old ...
s, operating mobile networks (
TDMA,
GSM
The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a family of standards to describe the protocols for second-generation (2G) digital cellular networks, as used by mobile devices such as mobile phones and Mobile broadband modem, mobile broadba ...
,
CDMA
Code-division multiple access (CDMA) is a channel access method used by various radio communication technologies. CDMA is an example of multiple access, where several transmitters can send information simultaneously over a single communicatio ...
,
W-CDMA
The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a 3G mobile cellular system for networks based on the GSM standard. UMTS uses wideband code-division multiple access (W-CDMA) radio access technology to offer greater spectral efficiency ...
,
PDC), international telephony traffic and signaling.
AXE based equipment are being used as BSC/TRC, MSC, HLR, SCP, FNR, TSC, STP and wireline nodes.
The brain of the AXE system is a dual processor system called APZ. It runs in
parallel sync mode making it fault redundant. The family of APZs started with APZ 210 03 in 1976; the latest one is APZ 214 03. The parallel sync mode was partly abandoned in the APZ 212 40 and subsequent models and has been replaced with a warm standby scheme.
The latest APZ type is 214 03 which is used as MSC, TSC and HLR Blade in AXE. The latest implementation of AXE is on a blade cluster system capable of handling up to 8 million subscribers.
The core of the switching part was the Group Switch, initially a time-space-time multiplexer capable of switching up to 64K positions or connections. This Group Switch later evolved to a Distributed Group Switch using Time-Space switching technique with a maximum capacity of 512K.
AXE nodes have evolved as a traffic controller, having the new Media Gateway node running on CPP platform handle the payload traffic.
Ericsson AXE telephone exchanges support
lawful intercepts via the remote-control equipment subsystem (RES), which carries out the tap, and the interception management system (IMS), software used for initiating the tap, which adds the tap to the RES database. In a fully operating lawful interception system the RES and IMS both create logs of all numbers being tapped so that system administrators can perform audits to find unauthorized taps.
Code is written in
PLEX
Plex Inc. is an American software company that runs its namesake over-the-top ad-supported streaming television service and develops media server software that lets users stream their personal media collections to their devices. The company is ...
(a
proprietary programming language
A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs.
Programming languages are described in terms of their syntax (form) and semantics (meaning), usually defined by a formal language. Languages usually provide features ...
tied to the AXE hardware, designed by Göran Hemdahl),
SDL and ASA210C programming languages. Code for Regional Processors (controlling hardware Extension Modules) is written in ASA210R.
AXE switches used in the United Kingdom are sometimes referred to as
System Y as they were the first competitive alternative to the domestically developed
System X digital switching system.
See also
*
Greek telephone tapping case 2004-2005
References
{{reflist
External links
Ericsson AXE web page
Telephone exchange equipment
Ericsson