Patent ID: 6865238

Claim:
A multi-channel satellite uplink transmission system dividing an original digital signal into a plurality of digital subchannels and adding a common timing signal to each subchannel, the multi-channel uplink transmission system conspiring: a subchannel divider for transforming the original digital signal into the plurality of digital subchannel signals such that each digital subchannel signal contains at least some information unique to that subchannel signal and also such that a bit rate of each digital subchannel signal is lower than a bit rate of the original digital signal; a timing generator for generating a periodic signal; signal combining means, coupled to the timing generator and the subchannel divider, for adding the periodic signal to each subchannel signal within a bandwidth of each subchannel signal such that no additional bandwidth allocation is required to transmit the periodic signal, and in accordance therewith generating a plurality of modulated carrier signals; upconverting means, coupled to the signal combining means, for translating a frequency of each modulated carrier signal to a frequency of a selected one of a plurality of satellite transponders; amplifier means, coupled to the upconverting means, for increasing a power level of each translated modulated carrier signal; and antenna means, coupled to the amplifier means, for directing a radio frequency wave corresponding to each translated modulated carrier signal toward a receiving antenna of each selected satellite transponder.