Request mechanism for communication system between interactive terminals and head station, terminal and method therefore

摘要

Ground-based terminal stations (2) submit requests for allocation of resources, such as timeslots, to a master station (1) via e.g. a Ka band satellite. Data and control information is transmitted back to the requesting terminal via a second satellite, e.g. operating in Ku band. The terminals include a reservations counter and store allocations which are not yet used up, the stored value being then taken into account before further requests are made. Independent claims are included for a terminal operating in the communication system, and for a method of requesting the allocation of communications resources in such a system.