Digital satellite system and method for serving users of differing capacities

摘要

In a multibeam digital time-division switched satellite communications system users of differing capacity needs are efficiently served by quantizing the capacity of each ground station and similarly the bit repetition rate of each ground station into integral powers of 2. At the satellite the uplink bitstream transmitted by each ground station is recovered and the higher rate bitstreams are demultiplexed to form plural equal bit rate subchannels at the input to the satellite switch, the number of subchannels formed being equal to the quantized capacity of the associated ground station. After the satellite switch transfers the bits present at the switch inputs from all ground stations to the appropriate switch outputs, a plurality of output subchannels are multiplexed to form the higher bit rate signals, the number of subchannels multiplexed being equal to the quantized capacity of the ground station to which the bits are directed.