Patent ID: 7158575

Claim:
A system for providing a bi-directional data communications channel having a user data channel and a back channel within each direction of the bi-directional data communications channel, the system comprising: at least two transmitter modules, one transmitter module for each direction of the bi-directional data communications channel, each of the transmitter modules encoding a user data stream and a back channel data stream into a coded data stream and transmitting the coded data stream through the data communications channel; at least two receiver modules, one receiver module for each direction of the bi-directional data communications channel, each of the receiver modules receiving the coded data stream transmitted through the data communications channel and decoding the coded data stream into the user data stream and the back channel data stream; and wherein the user data stream includes at least one user data word that corresponds to a plurality of coded representations wherein each of the coded representations represents a symbol of the back channel data stream, and wherein each receiver module, upon receiving at least one of the plurality of coded representations that represents back channel information, decodes the coded representation into the user data word of the user data stream and into the symbol of the back channel data stream.