SYSTEM FOR PROVIDING SATELLITE BANDWIDTH ON DEMAND EMPLOYING UPLINK FRAME FORMATTING FOR SMOOTHING AND MITIGATING JITTER AND DYNAMICALLY CHANGING NUMBERS OF CONTENTION AND DATA CHANNELS

摘要

A method of transmitting time division multiplexed data from a satelliteterminal to a satellite wherein the satellite terminal receives a commandindicating to transmit data during a frame comprising a plurality of timeslotsin accordance with a timeslot reordering scheme. The timeslot reorderingscheme is selected to spread data from respective satellite terminals todifferent timeslots throughout the frames. A processor monitors the use ofchannels by the satellite terminals, stores bandwidth requests using queues,allocates channels in accordance with bandwidth requests and a bandwidthallocation algorithm, and transmits the channel allocations in a frame.Timeslots not allocated to any of the satellite terminals are contentionchannels. The number of contention channels changes dynamically, depending ondemand for the plurality of channels by the satellite terminals. Queues areprovided for each channel for storing high and low priority rate requests andhigh and low priority volume requests. The bandwidth allocation algorithmdetermines the preemption of the queues, and allocation priorities.