Patent ID: 7110457

Claim:
A method of multiplexing a higher bandwidth data stream and a plurality of lower bandwidth data streams, each of the lower bandwidth data streams having a bandwidth lower than a bandwidth of the higher bandwidth data stream, to generate a multiplexed data stream, comprising the steps of: (a) defining a data segment comprising a segment header and a plurality of data segment words, a position of each of the data segment words in a data segment representing one of a plurality of data channels, such that each of the channel words for a data channel is located in the same position within each data segment; (b) embedding the data segments into the higher bandwidth data stream; (c) embedding stream header data for each lower bandwidth data stream into the higher bandwidth data stream, the stream header data identifying which channel or channels carry the lower bandwidth data stream associated with the stream header; and (d) embedding clock reference data in each stream header as a timing reference for reconstitution of the lower bandwidth data streams at a receiver.