The emergence of multimedia telecommunications and its impact on power architectures

The emergence of multimedia communications and its impact on powering architectures are reviewed in three time frames: prior to divestiture of AT&T in 1984; ten years after divestiture; and the next ten years. Competition, spurred by the divestiture together with advances in technology, accelerated the introduction of digital electronics, fiber and wireless to create broadband multimedia communications networks. These networks are increasingly able to provide a panoply of voice, data and image services on demand to any place and any time. To support these networks, power technologists have designed distributed architectures and smaller, lighter, more flexible, higher efficient and lower cost rectifiers, DC/DC converters, DC/AC inverters, and batteries compatible with the new environment. At the same time, network nodes are moving closer to the users, power processing is steadily moving closer to the electronics; into system frames in COs and closer to the users in distributed network elements. The success of distributed network architectures is tightly coupled to the availability of interoperability standards and power management systems that can be integrated into end-to-end multimedia network management systems