VIRTUAL CHANNEL SATELLITE COMMUNICATION SYSTEM WITH IMPROVED BANDWIDTH EFFICIENCY

摘要

Presented is a satellite communication system (40) that allows aggregation of available transponder bandwidth. A channel signal is divided into subparts, formatted and distributed among a plurality of subchannels (25a-25n) according to bandwidth availability. Each subpart is encoded with information that facilitates proper reconstruction of the original channel data at the receiving station. The subchannels are transmitted to a receiving station, which synchronizes the subchannels and decapsulates the subparts. The receiving station includes a subchannel combiner which combines the decapsulated subparts in select subchannels to produce a reconstructed version of a user-selected channel signal. A controller in the receiving station identifies the subchannels to be combined in response to user selection and sends commands to a subchannel combiner. The receiving station also includes a connectivity matrix that discards the unnecessary subchannels before demodulation and reconstruction, reducing the number of demodulators (34a-34n) in the system.