Patent ID: 7065125

Claim:
In a system for providing multiple access over a single communication channel, a receiver comprising: a digital signal representing a received data burst; a data bus, the digital signal being fed to the data bus; a control bus; a preamble detection component coupled to the control bus, the digital signal further being fed to the preamble detection component, the preamble detection component configured to detect preambles using a first spreading code; plural demodulation circuits, each coupled to the data bus and to the control bus, each configured to produce a data stream from data received over the data bus; a selection component operatively coupled to the preamble detection component and coupled to the control bus, the selection component configured to select an available demodulation circuit; and plural additional preamble detection components, each configured to detect preambles using a spreading code different from the spreading code of the other preamble detection components, each coupled to receive the digital signal, each coupled to the data bus, each coupled to the selection component, wherein one of the demodulation circuits operates on data in response to control signals issued by the preamble detection component and by the selection component, so that multiple data bursts received by the preamble detection component can be concurrently processed by selected ones of the demodulation circuits.