Patent ID: 8817603

Claim:
A satellite-based messaging system wherein messages are exchanged between a ground station and mobile terminals over a wide geographic area covered by multiple satellite beams, and wherein each beam contains one or more carrier frequencies, comprising a message processing center configured to: provision a frame comprising a plurality of subframes over a forward link to the mobile terminals, said subframes being capable of carrying one or more data packets addressed to one or more said mobile terminals; hop between beams in the forward link within each frame and assign each subframe within a frame carrying data packets to a specific satellite beam, whereby each subframe carrying data packets corresponds to a carrier frequency/beam hop combination; provision a transport medium in the form of virtual carriers, each virtual carrier being defined by a forward link comprising one or more particular carrier frequency/beam hop combinations and a shared return link, and wherein each virtual carrier is assigned a unique virtual carrier identifier; and notify the mobile terminals of carrier frequency/hop combinations for assigned virtual carrier identifiers.