Patent ID: 6940841

Claim:
A packet-switched system for communicating data, comprising: a plurality of packet transmitters, each packet transmitter including, a transmitter-first-in-first-out (transmitter-FIFO) memory, coupled to a data input, for storing data; a demultiplexer, coupled to said transmitter-FIFO memory and having a plurality of outputs, for demultiplexing the stored data into a plurality of sub-data-sequence signals, with a respective sub-data-sequence signal at a respective output of said demultiplexer; chip-sequence means for outputting a plurality of chip-sequence signals, with each chip-sequence signal orthogonal to the other chip-sequence signals in said plurality of chip-sequence signals; a plurality of product devices, coupled to the plurality of outputs of said demultiplexer, respectively, and to said chip-sequence means, for multiplying each of the sub-data-sequence signals by a respective chip-sequence signal, thereby generating a plurality of spread-spectrum channels; a combiner, coupled to the plurality of product devices, for algebraically combining the plurality of spread-spectrum channels as a multichannel-spread-spectrum signal; a header device, coupled to said combiner, for concatenating a header to the multichannel-spread-spectrum signal, thereby generating a packet-spread-spectrum signal in the form of a time series of signals comprising the header and the multichannel-spread-spectrum signal; and a transmitter subsystem, coupled to said header device, for transmitting on a carrier frequency the packet-spread-spectrum signal using radio waves over a communications channel; and a plurality of packet receivers, each packet receiver including, a header processing device for processing a header in a received spread-spectrum signal in accord with a common chip sequence signal, to generate a control or timing signal; receiver-spread-spectrum means for despreading a multichannel-spread-spectrum signal embedded in the spread-spectrum signal as a plurality of received spread-spectrum channels, respectively; and a multiplexer coupled to said receiver-spread-spectrum means, for multiplexing the plurality of received spread-spectrum channels as received data.