An Integrated Approach to the Thermal Management of an Exchange

Unrelated specifications of the thermal environment of the exchange room and of equipment performance can lead to overspecification and unnecessary costs, or to underspecification and unreliability. An integrated approach is preferable. This paper outlines some of the work done by British Telecom and two System X suppliers, G.E.C. and Plessey, in a joint approach to the problem. Backed by a British Telecom test bed, it has resulted so far in design guides, a powerful rack temperature simulation package and cost effective experimental building blocks to measure temperatures of critical equipments before the cards, shelves and racks have been laid out.