Patent · US Expired

Coding system and method for low-earth orbit satellite data communication

US6157642A · kind A · utility

39Cited by
7References
28Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateOct 14, 1997
Grant dateDec 5, 2000
Priority date
Expiry dateOct 14, 2017

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
  • CPC primaryH04L1/0071
  • WIPO fieldDigital communication
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

A data communication system for a constellation of low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites (13a, 13b, . . . ) that employ Earth-fixed cellular beam management technology is disclosed. The data to be communicated is formed into data packets by a transmitting ground terminal (41). Each data packet includes a header (41) and a payload (43). The header (41) contains address and other control information and the payload (43) contains the data to be communicated. The header and payload databits are separated (71) and outer forward error correction (FEC) encoded (72, 73) with an outer error correction code. The symbols of the outer encoded header and payload codewords are interleaved, first separately (74, 75) and then together (76). The outer encoded, interleaved header and payload codewords are inner encoded by an inner FEC encoder (77). Upon receipt by an uplink satellite (63), the inner error correction code is removed (87) and the resulting codeword symbols are de-interleaved (88, 89, 90). The outer error correction code of the header portion is then removed (91) to recover the header of the original signal. The information contained in the header is used to route the data packets through t…

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.