Patent ID: 8804606

Claim:
A terminal in a satellite communication system comprised of a central hub and a plurality of terminals, the terminal comprising: at least one Ethernet interface; a mesh receiver configured to receive multi-frequency time division multiple access (MF-TDMA) transmissions from other terminals in the satellite communication system; a time division multiplexing (TDM) receiver configured to receive transmissions from the central hub, said TDM receiver comprising a tuner, a demodulator and a demultiplexer; at least one processor coupled to volatile or non-volatile memory devices; and synchronization circuits, wherein the terminal is configured to: couple a reference clock input of the mesh receiver with a reconstructed reference clock (PCR) generated by the synchronization circuits; couple a frame synchronization input of the mesh receiver with a frame synchronization signal generated by the synchronization circuits; couple a transport stream input of the mesh receiver with a transport stream output of the TDM receiver's demodulator; couple an external reference signal input of the mesh receiver with a reference signal of the TDM receiver's tuner; and couple an Ethernet interface of the mesh receiver with an Ethernet interface of the terminal.