Patent ID: 8498238

Claim:
A satellite communication system for communicating between a plurality of user terminals comprising: at least one satellite which provides multiple beams; a plurality of user terminals that communicate with each other, a public switched telephone network, or a data network, via said at least one satellite; and at least one gateway connected to the public switched telephone network and/or the data network and communicating with at least one user terminal over at least one satellite, wherein each of said user terminals within a given frequency band of the satellite communication system is distinguished from another of said user terminals employing a combination of time division multiplexing and only non-orthogonal pseudorandom noise codes and time slots where each of the time slots includes only the non-orthogonal pseudorandom noise codes to distinguish each of said user terminals; wherein said user terminals located in a satellite beam are distinguished from another of said user terminals located in an adjacent satellite beam assigned to an identical time slot by a scrambling code comprising a pseudorandom noise sequence uniquely assigned to each beam.