Patent ID: 7698378

Claim:
A communication system, comprising: at least a first service node; at least a second service node different from the first service node; and at least one client station positioned to communicate with at least the first and second service nodes over different respective first and second channels, the first service node providing a first part of a use case to the client station, and the second service node providing a second part of the use case to the client station simultaneously to the first service node providing the first part of the use case to the client station, the first and second parts being different portions of the use case but collectively representing either image or sound data, wherein the first part is a base layer of a multimedia stream and the second part is an enhancement layer of the multimedia stream, wherein the multimedia stream includes at least one of image or sound, wherein the base layer and the enhancement layer collectively represent one, but not both, of image or sound data in the multimedia stream, and wherein the second part adds fidelity to the first part to provide additional quality to a base quality of the respective one of image or sound data provided by the base layer, wherein the base layer represents an amount of data to render a frame of the multimedia stream with the base quality, and wherein the at least one client station overlays the enhancement layer onto the base layer to establish frames of the multimedia stream with the additional quality, each frame including data from the base layer and data from the enhancement layer.