Patent ID: 8189504

Claim:
A terminal to process a physical layer header for a received wireless signal, the terminal comprising: a receiver module for receiving the wireless signal transmitted via a satellite; an A/D module, communicatively coupled with the receiver module, for processing the received wireless signal to generate a digitized stream of symbols comprising a physical layer signal; and a header processing module, communicatively coupled with the A/D module, for searching the received wireless signal for a code block of a first physical layer header corresponding to a start of frame location; for processing the code block to identify the start of frame location, wherein the code block further comprises signaling information attributable to the payload of the frame; for utilizing the identified start of frame location to achieve frame synchronization and thereby identify a second physical layer header arriving after the first physical layer header; and for decoding a code block of the second physical layer header to identify signaling information for a payload associated with the second physical layer header.