PACKET ALIGNMENT METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR SIMPLIFYING PARSING AT A DECODER IN A PACKET-BASED COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM

摘要

A method of packetizing a data stream (80) for transmission comprises the steps of (a) segmenting the data stream (80) and inserting successive segments of the data stream into a plurality of successive program packets (82), each program packet having a header followed by a payload section; (b) for each of the successive program packets, (i) inserting successive segments of the program packet into the payload sections of a consecutive sequence of transport packets (90-98) such that the header of the program packet is aligned with the beginning of the payload section of a first transport packet in the sequence; and (ii) repeating step (b) (i) until the last segment of the program packet is reached. If the last segment of the program packet does not fill the entire payload section of a last transport packet in the sequence, then stuffing bytes are added to the last transport packet to fill out the remainder of the payload section of that transport packet. In this manner, the header of each program packet is always aligned with the beginning of a transport packet payload.