MULTIPLEXING DIGITAL SIGNALS FOR TRANSMISSION TO REMOTE LOCATIONS

摘要

A multiplex frame format for transmitting digital data in a data transmission system comprises a PACKETS portion comprising a highly error-protected region, a region having only Reed Solomon encoding as an error protection measure, and a portion including low speed data. The frame format also comprises portions for transmitting medium (AUDIO) and high speed (VIDEO) data streams following the PACKETS portion. Prior to transmission, the composed frame comprising the PACKETS, AUDIO and VIDEO portions is interleaved and the BLOCK SYNC and FRAME SYNC are added (110). A multiplex structure control packet word of the PACKETS portion immediately follows FRAME SYNC. Thus, the FRAME SYNC word defines where interleaving begins. A demultiplexer (156) in concert with a microcontroller (158) of a decoder (154, 155) decodes the multiplex structure control word and related PACKETS and outputs digital data streams to related output peripheral processors (157).