Patent ID: 6895037

Claim:
A spread-spectrum system comprising: a demultiplexer for demultiplexing input data into a plurality of data channels; a plurality of forward-error-correction encoders and interleavers for FEC encoding and interleaving the plurality of data channels as a plurality of FEC encoded and interleaved channels, respectively; a plurality of spread-spectrum processors for spread-spectrum processing the plurality of FEC encoded and interleaved channels as a plurality of spread-spectrum channels, employing a plurality of chip-sequence signals; a combiner for combining the plurality of spread-spectrum channels as a code-division-multiplexed signal; a modulator for transmitting the code-division-multiplexed signal having the plurality of spread-spectrum channels, over a communications channel; a plurality of spread-spectrum despreaders for despreading the code-division-multiplexed signal into a plurality of despread channels, respectively; a multiplicity of adders, electronically controlled by an adder-control signal, for adding at least two despread channels to generate a multiplicity of added channels; a multiplicity of FEC decoder and de-interleavers for generating a syndrome signal from an error rate of the multiplicity of added channels, and for FEC decoding and de-interleaving the multiplicity of added channels, and a multiplicity of decoded channels; a command processor, responsive the syndrome signal, for determining a desired-data rate, for generating a data-rate command signal having the desired data rate, for generating the adder-control signal for adding together a number of despread channels of the plurality of despread channels, and for generating a multiplexer signal having a number of decoded channels to multiplex together; and a multiplexer for multiplexing the multiplicity of decoded channels and an estimate of the input data.