Patent ID: 6349094
Filing Date: 2002-02-19
Classification: H04B

Abstract:
A communication system having a plurality of channels comprising,broadcaster means including a plurality of macro-diverse broadcaster transmitters for broadcasting forward channel signals and a broadcaster control for controlling the broadcaster transmitters, a plurality of users for receiving the forward channel signals and for transmitting user signals in user channels, a plurality of macro-diverse collector means distributed at macro-diverse locations, each of said collector means including, collector receiver means for receiving said user signals and providing a plurality of received signals for each of said plurality of users, collector processing means for processing said received signals to form collector signals including sequences of data bits representing the received signals and including initial confidence metrics corresponding to said data bits for each of said plurality of users, where the initial confidence metrics are represented by an initial number of metric bits, said collector processing means including collector confidence metric processing means for processing said initial confidence metrics to form processed confidence metrics having bandwidth values, aggregator means for combining said collector signals using said processed confidence metrics from said plurality of macro-diverse collector means for each of said plurality of users to form a final sequence of data bits representing the user signals for each of said plurality of users, bandwidth control means for controlling said bandwidth values.