| 摘要 |
A method for ensuring accurate reception of digitally encoded messages that are transmitted over a broadcast network to a plurality of receivers. Each message is divided into packets and the set of packets comprising each message is cyclically retransmitted for a selected number of transmission cycles. Typically, from two to five transmission cycles are sufficient to ensure accurate reception of each message. Each packet includes all or part of a digitally encoded message, a header, and a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) code (or other error code). Each header identifies the message to which the packet belongs and the position of the packet within the message. Each receiver in the network stores an address in an internal memory, and is capable of comparing a transmitted address (in the header of one or more of the packets in each message) with its stored address and accepting only those packets having an appropriate address. Each accepted packet is checked for errors using the transmitted error code (which preferably is a CRC code). If no errors are detected, the packet number of the packet is added to a list of correctly received packets for the message. If an error is detected, the packet number of the packet is not added to this list. Upon retransmission of the same message, the receiver checks the list against the header of each retransmitted packet of the message, and accepts only those packets which were not previously received without error. In a preferred embodiment, the messages are transmitted in the SCA band of an FM channel. Each receiver preferably includes an appropriately programmed computer in which the signal processing operations comprising the invention are performed in software.
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