Patent ID: 7613247

Claim:
A communications system comprising a transmitter, including, a demultiplexer for demultiplexing input data into a plurality of data channels; a plurality of forward-error-correction encoders and interleavers, coupled to said demultiplexer, for FEC encoding and interleaving the plurality of data channels as a plurality of FEC encoded and interleaved channels, respectively; a plurality of processors coupled to said plurality of FEC encoders and interleavers, for processing the plurality of FEC encoded and interleaved channels as a plurality of modulated channels; a combiner coupled to said plurality of processors, for combining the plurality of modulated channels as a multiplexed signal; a receiver, including, a plurality of demodulators for demodulating the multiplexed signal into a plurality of demodulated channels, respectively; a multiplicity of FEC decoder and de-interleavers, coupled to said plurality of demodulators for FEC decoding and de-interleaving the multiplicity of demodulated channels, as a multiplicity of decoded demodulated channels having an error rate; a command processor responsive to the error rate for determining a desired data rate and generating a control signal to be transmitted to the transmitter; and a multiplexer, coupled to said plurality of FEC decoders and de-interleavers, for multiplexing the multiplicity of decoded channels.