SATELLITE COMMUNICATION MULTICAST PROCESSING TECHNIQUES USING MULTICAST REPLICATION AND OUTBOUND PROCESSING

摘要

A satellite communication system which performs multicastswitching on data cells. A switch 80 receives the data cellsat a set of input ports IP1 and directs those including amulticast routing code to a first set of output ports OP2 orOP128. The switch 80 also directs data cells effectivelyomitting the multicast routing code to a second set of outputports OP1. One or more multicast replication modules 110, 130are coupled to the first set of output ports and replicatedata cells requiring multicast processing. During theprocessing, the multicast routing code is effectively omittedand the replicated cells are coupled to input ports IP2 or IP128 so that the replicated data cells are transmitted to thesecond set of output ports OP1. An outbound processing module100 is coupled to output ports OP1 for processing the datacells for transmission over a satellite downlink transmitter104.