Patent ID: 7362759

Claim:
An apparatus for encoding transport information, comprising: at least one channel; a first overhead processor coupled to the at least one channel and configured to obtain a first portion of transport information from the at least one channel; a second overhead processor coupled to the at least one channel and configured to obtain a second portion of transport information from the at least one channel; a path pointer processor coupled to the at least one channel; a third overhead processor coupled to the path pointer processor and configured to obtain a third portion of transport information from the at least one channel; and an overhead extractor coupled to the first overhead processor, the second overhead processor and the third overhead processor to receive the first portion of transport information, the second portion of transport information and the third portion of overhead, the overhead extractor configured to encode the first portion of the overhead and the second portion of the overhead and to provide a field of encoded bits representative of a frame number, a channel number and an overhead byte location.