Line signaling is a class of

telecommunications Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that fe ...

signaling In signal processing, a signal is a function that conveys information about a phenomenon. Any quantity that can vary over space or time can be used as a signal to share messages between observers. The ''IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing'' ...

protocols Protocol may refer to: Sociology and politics * Protocol (politics), a formal agreement between nation states * Protocol (diplomacy), the etiquette of diplomacy and affairs of state * Etiquette, a code of personal behavior Science and technology ...

. Line signaling is responsible for

off-hook In telephony, on-hook and off-hook are two states of a communication circuit. On subscriber telephones the states are produced by placing the handset onto or off the hookswitch. Placing the circuit into the off-hook state is also called ''seizing th ...

ringing signal A ringtone, ring tone or ring is the sound made by a telephone to indicate an incoming call. Originally referring to and made by the electromechanical striking of bells, the term now refers to any sound on any device alerting of a new incoming ...

, answer,

ground start {{refimprove, date=January 2008 In telephony, ground start is a method of signaling from a terminal of a subscriber local loop to a telephone exchange, where one side of a cable pair is temporarily grounded to request dial tone. Most middle 20th-c ...

on-hook In telephony, on-hook and off-hook are two states of a communication circuit. On subscriber telephones the states are produced by placing the handset onto or off the hookswitch. Placing the circuit into the off-hook state is also called ''seizing th ...

unidirectional supervision messaging in each direction from

calling party The calling party (in some contexts called the "A-Number") is a person who (or device that) initiates a telephone call. The person who, or device that, receives a telephone call is the called party (or callee or B-party). In some countries, it is ...

called party The called party (in some contexts called the "B-Number") is a person who (or device that) answers a telephone call. The person who (or device that) initiates a telephone call is the calling party. In some situations, the called party may number m ...

and vice versa. After an off-hook, line signaling initiates

register signaling In telecommunications, register signaling provides addressing information, such as the calling and/or called telephone number. R2 register signaling is an example. This is contrasted with line signaling Line signaling is a class of telecomm ...

to accomplish the exchange of

telephone number A telephone number is a sequence of digits assigned to a landline telephone subscriber station connected to a telephone line or to a wireless electronic telephony device, such as a radio telephone or a mobile telephone, or to other devices f ...

s of called party and in more modern line-signaling protocols, the calling party as well. While register signaling occurs, line signaling remains quiescent unless the calling party goes on-hook or an abnormal cessation of the call occurs, such as due to equipment malfunction or shutdown or due to

network Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematics ...

outage upstream in that call-attempt's series of spanned trunks. Line signaling can be conveyed in a single

DS0 Digital Signal 0 (DS0) is a basic digital signaling rate of 64 kilobits per second (kbit/s), corresponding to the capacity of one analog voice-frequency-equivalent communication channel. The DS0 rate, and its equivalents E0 in the E-carrier system ...

channel of a trunk. In modern PCM telecommunications, line signaling is represented by the ABCD bits in DS0 #16 of an E1 or a selected DS0 within a T1. Line signaling can also be conveyed within the channels being supervised, as in the original T1 scheme which used one out of every eight bits for supervision, or with robbed bits of a superframe format, or as

in-band signaling In telecommunications, in-band signaling is the sending of control information within the same band or channel used for data such as voice or video. This is in contrast to out-of-band signaling which is sent over a different channel, or even o ...

, e.g. as in L1 signaling where 2280 Hz tone pulses are used.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Line Signaling Telephony signals