IL266379A - A method and system for satellite communication - Google Patents

Description

- 64 - 266379/4 A METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR SATELLITE COMMUNICATION Filing Date 16 11 2017 FIELD AND BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION The present disclosure relates to the field of communications and in particularly to communications being held between satellites and terminals associated therewith in a satellite communications network.

BACKGROUND The term “satellite system(s)” referred to hereinbelow, should be understood to encompass any one or more members of the group that consists of geo-stationary satellite systems, Low Earth Orbit ("LEO") satellite systems and Medium Earth Orbit ("MEO") satellite systems and other types of platforms such as High-Altitude Platforms (“HAP”) which are quasi-stationary aircrafts that provide means of delivering a service to a large area while remaining in the air for long periods of time, High-altitude, long- endurance unmanned aerial vehicles (“HALE UAV”), and the like.

In a typical satellite communications network a portion of the available capacity is allocated for hub-to-satellite communications in the forward link. Similarly, a portion of the return link capacity is allocated for satellite-to-hub communications. Although these portions of the link capacity, allocated for communicating with the hub, (also referred to as an earth station, gateway or teleport), are not discussed explicitly in the following description, still, it should be noted that the methods and air interface protocols discussed in the following disclosure may as well, and typically are, implemented in such a hub, in case where the satellite serves merely as a “bent pipe”.

Namely, the satellite does not process the signals it receives other than carrying out a basic filtering thereon and shifting them in frequency.

In various satellite communication systems Frequency Division Duplexing (FDD) is used. Different frequencies are used for the forward traffic (i.e. traffic transmitted from the satellite to the terminals) and for the return traffic (i.e. traffic transmitted from terminals to the satellite) of the RF link.- 2 - 266379/3 Typically, for the capacity portions allocated in the uplink (namely, for transmitting hub to satellite communications and terminal to satellite communications) the allocated frequency is substantially different from the frequency allocated for carrying out downlink communications (i.e. satellite to hub communications and satellite to terminal communications), using the capacity portion allocated therefor.

Interference occurring due to transmissions sent from/to neighbor satellites, using the same frequencies as well as interference occurring due to communications transmitted along satellites beams using the same frequencies, tend to degrade the reception performance and to limit the maximal channel throughput.

Interference to communications exchanged along satellite links is one of the major factors limiting the capacity of satellite communication. Modern satellites include numerous transponders transmitting at different frequencies, different antennas (single beam or multiple beam), and different polarizations per antenna. Thus, a ground receiver of a satellite link is susceptible to interference that may arise, for example, from co-frequency transmissions at the same frequency, same beam but different polarization (co-frequency, co-beam, cross polarization), same frequency but a different beam (co-frequency, adjacent beam), and adjacent frequency channel from the same or from different beams.

As the satellite uplink receiver is also susceptible to interference, interference on the uplink may leak into the desired channel as well. Additionally, unwanted interference originating from an adjacent satellite may also occur as well as interfering signals from terrestrial sources. events may be caused by rules violations or errors made by operators. However, the effects of these events might be mitigated due to the newly established Carrier ID standard, which enables a satellite operator or regulators to identify and shut down interfering transmissions. Nevertheless, even links that operate in accordance with the operation rules and regulations may still be a source of interference.

Active interference cancellation means are available. Such means typically involve building a dedicated receiver to capture the interfering signal and then cancel it by subtraction from the wanted signal. Obviously, this technique is rather costly while perfect cancellation is never possible. Even when the interfering signal is known (which is the case when dummy frames are transmitted), cancellation requires synchronization - 3 - 266379/3 and channel estimation of the interference, which might still require installation of additional circuitry.

GENERAL DESCRIPTION In various communication systems/network terminals that cannot receive traffic while they are transmitting traffic. In order to accommodate this limitation, and at the same time make efficient use of both uplink and downlink capacity, the system/network must perform specialized forward link multiplexing and return link capacity assignment.

The term terminal refers in general to an end station of a communication system connected to the end user of the system. In the context of a two way satellite communication system the term refers to the ground station used by the consumer while the term hub or gateway refers to the ground station which serves the service provider.

One approach for scheduling the transmissions is to perform on-the-fly transmit­ receive conflict resolution without imposing any limitation on the terminals by inducing a framing mechanism thereon. To do that, a scheduler must ensure that packets are only multiplexed onto the forward link at such times that they arrive at the terminal when it is not transmitting. This means, in turn, that the forward link multiplexer must maintain a separate queue for each (active) terminal and, in addition, track the propagation delay between the satellite and that very same terminal. Once every return link time slot, and for each non-empty output queue, the scheduler would use the delay information to consult the return link capacity allocation matrix in order to check whether, at the projected time of forward link packet reception, the terminal is scheduled to transmit or not. The scheduler must then serve fairly the non-blocked queues. In addition, scheduling must allow terminals certain pre-agreed short transmission windows for random-access return link transmissions. Finally, return link capacity allocation must keep a terminal’s transmission duty cycle below 100% to ensure that it can send forward link traffic without excessive delay.

Transmit-receive scheduling also impacts terminal handover between beams and satellites. With the scheme described above, the scheduler must be involved in each handover in order to make sure that forward link data is correctly re-routed.

Satellite communication it often used for broadcast transmissions, distribution and contribution links, cellular and Internet connection backhaul traffic, and/or for many other communication purposes. According to the conventional satellite - 4 - 266379/3 communication techniques, a large part of the communication traffic transferred via satellites, is communicated over continuous transmission channel/link, in which non information coded transmission signals are transmitted in the time gaps between information coded transmission section of the transmitted signals. The conventional use of continuous transmissions (where gaps between sections of information coded signals are filled with non-information coded signals) non information coded transmission signals) is aimed at obviating a need for receivers, to re-acquire and re-synchronize to separate transmission bursts of information coded signals. In other words, such continuous transmission mode enables the receiver to track the various transmission parameters relatively in a straightforward operation.

Therefore, satellite communications' standards, such as DVB-S2 and DVB-S2X define a continuous transmission mode of operation in the forward link (transmissions being sent from the satellite(s) towards the terminals), and define that whenever the (hub) transmitter has no data to transmit, “dummy frames” will be transmitted, which contain no information.

It should be understood that the terms beam and/or communication-beam is used herein to designate a beam of transmitted electromagnetic (EM) waves (typically of a radio frequency), which is directed (optionally by suitable antenna module) and/or constructed by beam forming (e.g. utilizing beam former and phase array antenna) to propagate to cover a certain designated region of interest. In beam hopping operation mode multiple such beams may be continuously or discontinuously be transmitted from the satellite whereby the data bandwidth directed to different coverage regions may be dynamically allocated by hopping one or more of the beams from one coverage zone to another (e.g. in a time interlaced fashion) so that multiple zones can be served by a lower number of coexisting simultaneously transmitted beams via a time domain dynamic beam allocation to zones.

The terms channel and/or communication-channel and/or link and/or communication-link are used herein interchangeably to designate a communication channel formed between the satellite and one of the terminals it serves. Typically, each beam simultaneously carries one or more communication channels to one or more terminals in the zone covered thereby.

Indeed, not all of the traffic being exchanged between the satellite and the terminals served thereby, requires the use of strictly continuous communication mode - 5 - 266379/3 (e.g. the latter is hereinafter also referred to as continuous communication links/channel). Interactive communications for example, are bursty by nature, and an assembly of such links forms links of non-constant rate. Depending on the specific statistics of the link, there is typically a significant difference between the allocated bandwidth of a link, which is typically determined by the difference between the peak information rate for transferring the information to the average information rate that can be supported. The dummy frames, used in the continuous communication mode (e.g. by the DVB-S2 and DVB-S2X standards) are used in order to compensate for this difference.

One deficiency of the conventional techniques using the continuous transmission modes is that the transmission of the dummy frames create unnecessary interference to adjacent beams and satellites, and as a result reduces the signal to noise and interference ratio (generally referred to herein as SINR) of the transmitted signal which in turn has an adverse effect on the effective data rate which can be received by the receivers.

Another deficiency of the continuous transmission mode, is associated with the inefficient allocation/distribution of the total data bandwidth of the satellite/transmitter.

This is because in this continuous mode of transmission, certain of the data bandwidths is allocated for transmitting the dummy frames which actually carry no data (no meaningful data), and this may result in a lower number of communication channel/beams as would have being possible in cases where non continuous transmission mode (no dummy frame transmission) is used. In other words, in case burst (non-continuous) transmission mode is used, the transmission time, during which the dummy frames are communicated in the continuous mode, might instead be allocated for the transmission of one or more additional beams/channels/links and thereby facilitate coverage of additional zones and/or allocating larger data bandwidths to each beam/zone. Accordingly in this manner a beam hopping system whereby transmission resources are used to serve different zones by different beams may be facilitated.

Yet additional adverse effect of the continuous transmission mode is that it results with an increased consumption of the transmission power, as compared to the case dummy frames are not transmitted, whereby energy is typically a valuable resource in satellites, in particular in micro- or nano- satellites.- 6 - 266379/3 Nevertheless, conventional satellite communication techniques are implementing continuous transmission mode, in which dummy frames (and/or other dummy transmission sections which do not encode any meaningful/required information) are transmitted in the time gaps between information coded transmission sections. This is made in order to facilitate efficient acquisition of the transmitted signal to be received, by the signal receivers (satellite terminals) that should receive the signal.

Indeed a bursty communication mode, in which no signal is transmitted in the time gaps between transmissions of information coded signal sections, may result in much more efficient communication in terms of SINR (signal to interference and noise), data bandwidth, beam hopping coverage, and energy consumption.

However, conventional satellite communication techniques, such as DVB-S2 and DVB-S2X standards, generally use the continuous communication mode. This is because the conventional receivers used in satellite communication, require significant time and resources to acquire (perform signal acquisition) and possibly synchronize to each communication burst of the separated communication bursts provided by the bursty communication mode. More specifically as will be explained in more details below, a receiver configured according to the conventional technique would require to receive at least two, and typically more than two, communication frames in order to lock-on-to (acquire) the signal, which is to be received thereby. More specifically, conventional receivers require a significant amount of time, extending over several/plurality of communication frames in order to analyze the signal, to scan over the possible carrier frequency of the signal, until the correct carrier frequency is determined, and the signal is acquired. This results with the effective loss of several communication frames after every discontinuity in the transmitted/received signal, which in turn makes the use of burst communication mode impractical/inefficient with the conventional receivers.

In this regard it should be noted that the term communication frame is used herein to designate a section (time portion) of a transmitted (EM) signal including a header part (typically encoding data indicative of at least the parameters of the physical layer of the communication) and a data payload part, in which the actual data that should be communicated to the receiver is encoded. Optionally the communication­ frame further includes additional sections, such as pilot sections and/or other. A dummy frame, is used herein to designate a communication frame in which the transmitted data - 7 - 266379/3 section of the signal does not encode any useful information for the receiver. A data coded frame, is used herein to designate a communication frame in which the transmitted data section of the signal encodes information useful for the receiver/terminal (e.g. payload data).

Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide a method for reducing interference occurring due to transmissions sent from/to neighbor satellites using the same frequencies and/or interference occurring due to communications transmitted along satellites beams using the same frequencies.

It is another object of the present invention to provide a method that relies on peak to average information rate difference, e.g. transmission of dummy frames, for reducing interference to the air interface operation.

It is another object of the present invention to provide a methods and systems for highly efficient beam-hopping transmissions with reduced transmission overhead and interferences and/or possibly with optimize transmission priorities.

It is an object of the present disclosure to provide a transmit-receive framing mechanism that simplifies substantially scheduling, streamline satellite and beam switchover.

It is another object of the present disclosure to provide a transmit-receive framing mechanism in which most of the complexity involved in routing and handover is shifted from the satellite to the gateway and the terminals.

It is still another object of the present disclosure to provide a novel method for enabling communications between one or more satellites and a plurality of terminals, wherein the plurality of terminals are divided into M groups of terminals.

Other objects of the present invention will become apparent as the description of the invention proceeds.

According to one broad aspect of the present invention there is provided a communication transmission system including: a data provider configured and operable for providing data to be communicated to one or more terminals over one or more forward communication channels; a communication frames generator module configured and operable to segregate the data into a plurality of data payload portions to be communicated to at least one terminal of the terminals over at least one forward communication channel of the forward communication channels and generate a sequence of communication frames to be sequentially transmitted over the - 8 - 266379/3 communication channel (each communication frame including a header portion and a data payload portion); and a transmission channel signal encoder configured and operable for generating a transmission signal for transmission via the forward communication channel with the sequence of communication frames encoded in the signal. According to the technique of the present invention the transmission channel data encoder is configured and operable in burst communication mode such that transmission signal includes transmission data time slots at which one or more of the communication frames are encoded in the signal and one or more recess time slots between them.

In some embodiments the communication transmission system also includes a transmission module configured and operable for transmitting the transmission signal in burst communication mode such that during the recess time slots no signal is transmitted.

In some embodiments the communication transmission system is configured and operable in a multi-beam mode for transmitting a plurality of beams having different respective geographical coverages. Each communication channel of the one or more forward communication channels is associated with at least one beam of the beams and designated for one or more terminals residing in a geographical coverage of said at least one beam. For example the system may be configured and operable in a beam-hopping mode, such that two or more groups of beams, each including at least one of the plurality of beams, are transmitted at distinct time intervals.

In some embodiments the communication transmission system includes a transmission scheduler module configured and operable for scheduling transmission of the two or more groups of beams. In some cases the transmission scheduler module is configured and operable for scheduling the transmission data time slots of the communication frames of the at least one forward communication channel of each group of beams is transmitted, so as to aggregate a plurality of recess timeslots together to form a prolonged recess time slot at which different group of one or more of the beams can be transmitted.

In some embodiments the transmission scheduler module is configured and operable in a dynamic scheduling mode for assigning dynamically determined time durations to the transmission of each beam during a beam hopping operation.- 9 - 266379/3 According to yet another broad aspect of the present invention there is provided a communication receiver module adapted for processing signals of a burst mode communication channel from a remote communication system. The communication receiver is configured and operable for processing at least a portion of a signal received in the communication channel after a recess time period during which communication frames were not transmitted in said communication channel to determine a carrier frequency of the communication channel, based on a single communication frame appearing in the communication channel after said recess time period.

According to additional broad aspect of the present invention, a method is provided for reducing interference to transmissions that occur due to other transmissions sent from/to neighboring satellites utilizing the same frequencies and/or interference that occur due to other communications transmitted along different satellites beams using the same frequencies, wherein the method comprises the step of replacing full dummy frames that should be transmitted in a TDM continuous satellite forward channel, with dummy frames' headers.

The term “same frequencies” as used herein throughout the specification and claims is used to denote the exact same frequencies, or frequencies that are sufficiently close to the transmission frequencies, thereby causing interference to the communications transmitted at the transmission frequencies.

According to another embodiment, the method provided further comprising a step of inserting at least one pilot sequence at least one gap formed when a full dummy frame associated with the dummy frame's header and comprises a respective payload, was replaced by a dummy frame's header.

In accordance with another embodiment, dummy frame's header is transmitted at a reduced power. Also, if at least one pilot sequence has been inserted at the at least one gap formed, it will be transmitted at a reduced power.

By yet another embodiment, the method provided further comprising a step of inserting dummy frames at least one of the satellite’s transmission beams, when there is data available for transmission along that at least one beam.

In accordance with another embodiment of this invention, the timing of the dummy frames is optimized so that the system performance is enhanced (e.g. the system throughput is increased). To this end, in a multi beam system, the transmitting timing of dummy frames, dummy frames headers or dummy frames headers and pilot signals in - 10 - 266379/3 each beam, is controlled in such a way that the inter-beam interference is minimized (at the cost of some additional delays). That is, dummy frames would be inserted in transmissions conveyed along a beam, even if this beam’s queue is not empty, in order to reduce interference to a certain frame or frames being transmitted along another beam or beams. The decision on whether to insert a dummy frame, and thus delaying transmission of a frame, may depend on that frame time sensitivity or other quality of service parameters associated therewith.

According to prior art protocols, dummy frames are transmitted only when there is no data to send. In accordance with another embodiment of the present invention, dummy frames, dummy frame headers or dummy frames headers and pilot signals are inserted at some of the beams (preferably at those that are less occupied with communications), also when there is data to send in order to reduce interference to other beams, at a cost of delaying the data frames.

According to another aspect of the disclosure, there is provided a receiver configured for use in a satellite communications network, wherein the receiver is configured to receive communications wherein full dummy frames that should have been transmitted in a TDM continuous satellite forward channel, were replaced with dummy frames' headers.

In accordance with another embodiment of this aspect of the disclosure, the receiver is further configured to receive communications in which at least one pilot sequence was inserted at least one gap formed when a full dummy frame associated with that dummy frame's header and comprises a respective payload, had been replaced with the dummy frame's header.

According to another broad aspect of the present invention there is provided a signal acquisition system. The signal acquisition system includes: an input module adapted to obtain a received signal (e.g. EM signal), which encodes communicated data over a certain unknown carrier frequency.

The certain unknown carrier frequency may be any one of a plurality of possible carrier frequencies residing within a predetermined frequency band. a signal time frame processor connected to the input module and configured and operable for continuous processing of time frame portions of the received signal to identify at least one code word of a group of one or more - 11 - 266379/3 predetermined code words, being encoded in a time frame portion of the received signal. The signal time frame processor includes: a carrier frequency analyzer module configured and operable for analyzing the time frame portion of the received signal in conjunction with the plurality of possible carrier frequencies simultaneously. This is achieved by transforming the time frame portion to generate carrier-data including a plurality of carrier-data-pieces associated with each possible carrier frequency of the plurality of possible carrier frequencies respectively. Each of the carrier-data pieces is indicative of data encoded in the time frame portion over a carrier frequency associated with the respective carrier-data piece; and a convolution module configured and operable for processing the time frame portion of the signal to simultaneously identify whether the time frame portion encodes said at least one code word, over any one of the a plurality of possible carrier frequencies.

The signal acquisition system may also include an output module configured and operable for outputting identification data indicative of identification of said code word in the signal.

To this end, the signal acquisition system may be adapted to determine a time index of said code word in the received signal based on the time frame portion of the received signal at which said the code word is identified, and the output module is adapted to output the time index. The time frame processor is adapted to process the carrier data to identify the carrier-data piece, which encodes significant data and thereby determine the carrier frequency of the received signal. The output module is further adapted to output the determined carrier frequency.

In another broad aspect invention also provides, a satellite communication terminal including the signal acquisition system described above.

The invention also provides a satellite communication terminal adapted for receiving a plurality of designated communication frames transmitted in a forward link from a satellite to said terminal, wherein said satellite operates in a beam-hopping mode and said communication terminal is associated with a certain group of one or more respective groups of communication terminals associated with respective beams transmitted by said satellite in said beam-hopping mode ;- 12 - 266379/3 wherein the satellite communication terminal comprises a signal receiving module configured and operable for performing signal receipt operation during a forwards link transmission of a respective beam of the beam-hoping mode which is associated with the certain group for receiving and processing the communication frame transmitted in said forward link from said satellite; and wherein said signal receiving module comprises the above-described signal acquisition system configured and operable to process at least a part of the communication frame received in the forward link from said satellite and to apply carrier locking on to a carrier frequency of said respective beam by identifying at least one code word in the respective communication frame and determine a time index at which said code word is encoded in the received signal and a carrier frequency over which said code word is encoded in the received signal.

In some embodiments described in the following, the air interface of the communication between the satellite and the terminals includes a forward link established by one or more TDM carriers, and a return link that utilizes a reservation access scheme such as Multi-Frequency Time Division Multiple Access (MF-TDMA).

In some implementation the air-interface used by the present invention may be characterized by its ability to accommodate the inability of the terminal to receive communications while being in a mode of transmitting communications. A frame that is used for the forward link, is divided into N – for example 4 – equal length sub-frames.

A forward link stream carried by each sub-frame will serve 1/N – one fourth using the same example – of the terminal population in a beam. The satellite return link scheduler will assign capacity to terminals, while taking into account their sub-frame association.

This scheme simplifies scheduling by the satellite and allows the terminals to be grouped for addressing over the forward link, and to save receiver power.

A forward link super-frame structure, taken together with signaling e.g. over a DVB-S2 (or any other applicable standard) PL (“Physical Layer”) header, is used to alert terminals which are in stand-by mode to a forward link traffic that is queued and is about to be transmitted to them. Beam and satellite handover may optionally but not necessarily rely on a system-wide GPS-grade time-base; terminal geo-location information; accurate satellite orbital data, communicated to the terminals through layer 2 signaling over the forward link; and the framing scheme described hereinabove. These enable the gateway and the terminal, running both identical, bit-exact coverage - 13 - 266379/3 calculation routines, to be synchronized for traffic routing and beam / satellite selection that requires minimal signaling.

Beam or satellite switchover for terminals that are in a stand-by mode or are currently receiving data, may involve no signaling and may be done with no interruption to the traffic. Return link transmission during switchover may include exchanging modified capacity request messages (e.g. preferably in a seamless manner) during intra-satellite switchover and nearly so between satellites.

To this end, according to yet another broad aspect of the present invention there is provides communication terminal adapted for receiving a plurality of designated communication sub-frames transmitted in a forward link from a satellite and/or from a data gateway and/or from another data communication mediator, to the terminal. The communication terminal is associated with a certain group of one or more respective groups of communication terminals, and each designated communication sub-frame is a respective portion of a communication frame, which transmitted from the data communication mediator (e.g. satellite) in the forwards link. The designated communication sub-frame includes N communication sub-frames designated to serves respective one or more groups of communication terminals. The satellite communication terminal includes: a scheduling module configured and operable for determining a time slot of the designated communication sub-frame within the communication frame transmitted by the communication mediator (satellite). The scheduling module may for example include: a forward link scheduler configured and operable for assigning a forwards link schedule for receiving said designated communication sub-frame at said time slot; and a return link scheduler configured and operable for assigning a return link schedule for transmitting information to the satellite during time slots other than said time slot of the designated communication sub-frame; and a signal receiving module associated with the scheduling module and configured and operable for performing signal receipt operation during the forwards link schedule for receiving and processing said designated sub-frame of the communication frame transmitted in the forward link from the communication mediator (satellite).- 14 - 266379/3 According to some embodiments the signal receiving module includes a signal acquisition system configured and operable to process at least a part of the communication frame received in the forward link from the communication mediator (satellite) and to lock on to the designated communication sub-frame by identifying at least one code word in the received signal designating the designated sub-frame, and determining a time index (sample position) at which the code word is encoded in the received signal and a carrier frequency over which the code word is encoded in the received signal.

According to yet further aspect of the present disclosure there is provided a method for enabling communications between one or more satellites and a plurality of terminals wherein the plurality of terminals are divided into M groups of terminals and wherein the method comprising: forwarding a plurality of communication frames in a forward link, wherein the plurality of frames are divided into N sub-frames, and wherein traffic being carried along the forward link by each of the N sub-frames serves one or more groups of terminals associated with a respective satellite, and assigning, by a satellite return link scheduler, a respective capacity of the return link for at least one of the one or more groups of terminals, wherein the assignment takes into account which of the sub-frames is associated with that at least one group of the terminals.

According to another embodiment, the terminals belonging to the at least one group of terminals are characterized in that they cannot receive communications while they are transmitting communications.

In accordance with another embodiment, each of the at least one group of terminals is further divided into sub-groups, and a Physical Layer Header (PL-Header) of each of the forward link communication frames specifies at least one of the sub­ groups, and wherein each communication frame carries traffic addressed to the at least one sub-group specified in the respective PL-Header.

By still another embodiment, each terminal is configured to decode every PL­ Header of the forward link communication frames, and wherein the method further comprises a step whereby if the PL-Header carries a an indication of a sub-group that matches the sub-group of terminals to which a respective terminal belongs, the respective terminal will decode the entire communication frame, and if the PL-Header - 15 - 266379/3 carries an indication of a sub-group that does not match the sub-group of terminals to which a respective terminal belongs, the respective terminal will not decode the respective entire communication frame.

In accordance with yet another embodiment, in a case where the PL-Header carries an indication of a sub-group that does not match the sub-group of terminals to which a respective terminal belongs, the respective terminal is configured to power down its receiver for the duration of the entire communication frame.

According to another embodiment, the method provided further comprises a step of alerting terminals from among the plurality of terminals which are currently in a stand-by mode, that traffic that is destined to them is currently being queued and is about to be transmitted to them.

In accordance with yet another embodiment, each of the N sub-frames comprises a baseband frame, and wherein all of the base-band frames are of a fixed, pre-defined length, having different modulations and/or different codes.

In accordance with another aspect, a method is provided for enabling communications between one or more satellites and a plurality of terminals, wherein the one or more satellites are configured to communicate with the plurality of terminals belonging to a public network through at least one gateway, and wherein the plurality of terminals and the at least one gateway are configured to execute identical, bit-exact satellite coverage calculation routines, synchronized for traffic routing and beam / satellite selection with minimal signaling.

According to another embodiment of this aspect, each of the plurality of terminals is configured to generate requests for allocation of return link capacity in another beam or a different satellite, thereby when a terminal switches a beam or a satellite, it is able to immediately utilize said allocated capacity over the new (switched- to) beam or at the new satellite.

In accordance with another embodiment, the terminal is configured to: accept initial geolocation information and to carry out a coarse alignment procedure; and execute a calibration routine that allows fine-aligning of its orientation and tilt based on reception of communications sent by the terminal to the respective satellite.

By yet another embodiment, the one or more satellites are configured to:- 16 - 266379/3 use gateway-referenced mechanism to establish a system-wide Time of Day (ToD) time base, and to periodically broadcast information that specifies the information that relates to a respective satellite of the one or more satellites.

According to still another embodiment, adaptive acquisition time is allocated for a period of time required for carrying out an inter-beam switchover and/or inter-satellite switchover.

In accordance with another embodiment, the satellite system is a member selected from a group that consists of: a Geo Stationary system, a LEO system and a MEO system.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS In order to better understand the subject matter that is disclosed herein and to exemplify how it may be carried out in practice, embodiments will now be described, by way of non-limiting example only, with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which: Fig. 1 illustrates a prior art transmission sequence of communications in a satellite network; Fig. 2 demonstrates one embodiment of the solution provided by the present invention whereby only the header of dummy frames are transmitted together with pilot signals, instead of full dummy frame's payload; Fig. 3 demonstrates another embodiment of the solution provided by the present invention whereby only the header of dummy frames are transmitted instead of the full dummy frames; Fig. 4A demonstrates a standard complying system (prior art) where no dummy frames are inserted at any of the beams when there is data to send along these beams; Fig. 4B illustrates yet another embodiment of the solution provided by the present invention whereby dummy frames are inserted at some of the beams also at times when there is data to send along these beams; Fig. 4C is a block diagram showing a communication transmission system configured according to an embodiments of the present invention; Figs. 4D and 4E are flow diagrams exemplifying the operation of a transmission scheduler module 350 of the communication transmission system of the present - 17 - 266379/3 invention for carrying out a beam hopping transmission according to two embodiments of the present invention; FIG. 5 illustrates an example scheme for transmit-receive scheduling; FIG. 6 illustrates an example scheduling scheme where the satellite accepts requests for capacity in the new beam that are received over the old beam; FIG. 7A is a block diagram of a communication terminal (e.g. satellite communication terminal) according to an embodiment of the present invention; FIG. 7B is a diagram schematically illustrating three possible frame structures of the DVB-S2X standard/protocol; and Figs. 8A to 8C are block diagrams of several examples of signal acquisition system according to various embodiments of the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF EMBODIMENTS In the following description, for the purposes of explanation, numerous specific details are set forth in order to provide a better understanding of the present invention by way of examples. It should be apparent, however, that the present invention may be practiced without these specific details.

In the description below, for some specific not limiting examples, of the use of the technique of the invention for particular protocol / standards such as DVB-S2 and in DVB-S2X Standards, the following terminology is at times used, and may be interpreted as follows with respect to these specific examples. However, it should be understood that for the general concept of the invention relating to general signal communication, these terms should be interpreted broadly in accordance with their general / functional meaning in the field.

DVB-S2/ DVB-S2X standard (EN 302 307, part I and part II) Dummy frames’ insertion is a common practice for all modes of operation of the DVB-S2 and DVB-S2X standard, except for broadcasting with constant coding and modulation (CCM). The standard foresees that inserting dummy frames for obtaining a rate matching between the allocated bandwidth (allocated transmission rate) and the actual transmission rate, is necessary. Dummy frames are inserted when data is not available at the input of the transmitter. A dummy frame is a relatively short frame (having a length of between 3330 to 3510 symbols), which comprises a header of 90 or- 18 - 266379/3 180 symbols, and 3240 pre-determined symbols instead of data. It may also include 72 symbols of pilots, which are also known symbols transmitted within each frame to facilitate synchronization and channel estimation. A typical DVB-S2/S2X frame varies in size between 3240 to 33720 symbols, and includes a header, data and pilot symbols.

The frame size depends on the type of modulation selected, while the actual symbol rate is determined by the allocated bandwidth for the link.

Calculation of expected improvement of link performance According to an embodiment of the present disclosure, dummy frames are transmitted while using a reduced transmission power.

Let us consider now the link associated with the interfering signal. The operational signal to noise plus interference ratio (SINR) of that link, which is required to decode the data, is higher than that required to acquire and decode the header and extract synchronization and channel parameters needed for the receiver. Thus, reducing the transmission power for transmitting a dummy frame, and even reducing the power for transmitting dummy symbols down to zero, would have no adverse effect on the performance of that link. Also, it should be appreciated that avoiding transmission of part of the dummy frame and/or reducing the power at which the dummy frames' headers, the pilot sequence (if available) or both, would require a somewhat different (more complex) receiver for carrying out the present invention than the typical receiver, commonly used nowadays.

Random Links Let us now consider a case where a link operates in an environment of L interfering links, each associated with an average to peak information rate of p( p ^1),l=1,...,L.

Assuming that all links transmit continuously. The SINR experienced by a link is given by: SINR = S N+£ I! i=l Where S is the received signal power, N is the noise power and Il is the interference power received from the interfering link. The received signal power, S, is in fact a random variable since the channel may undergo fading, so SINR0, - the - 19 - 266379/3 operational SINR, is determined by its statistics, which is measured or taken from ITU- R Recommendation No. P.618 entitled “Propagation data and prediction methods required for the design of Earth-space telecommunication systems”, 09/2013.

Now, let us consider a case where power reduction for transmitting dummy frames is implemented. In such a case, a fraction p of the time, link l will be transmitting in full power and cause interference of Il to the link of interest, while for 1-p of the time it will transmit with reduced power and the interference caused thereby will be reduced to aIt, a < 1. In other words, the power of interference caused by such a link, may be described as multiplied by a stochastic variable with binomial distribution. % l= ll x=1 pl Pr(Xl=x)= < 1 - Pl x = a The total interference is thus given by: LL L z I%l =zXlIl -_7 -_7 -_7 i=l i=l i=l The total interference is a random variable. Its exact statistics may depend on a number of parameters such as the number of interfering signals, their relative strength, the different average to peak ratio per link, and whether they are correlated (namely, if there is a correlation among dummy frames transmission times). However, similarly to the approach taken while considering the signal fluctuations, one can measure or estimate the margin required, when considering also the fact that the interference is reduced.

Controlled Links In case where all links are controlled by a central entity, (e.g. a scheduler), the stochastic process described hereinabove may be made more deterministic, and in this case, some maximal interference level may be ensured with high probability. For that purpose, the scheduler will transmit dummy frames (reduced power, header and pilots only) instead of frames which, according to their QoS requirement, can be delayed.

General Scheme and Relevant Standards- 20 - 266379/3 For the forward link, a single-carrier non-spread modulation is preferably used, e.g. as in the DVB-S2 and in DVB-S2X Standards (ETSI EN 302 307-1 and EN 302 307-2), while for the return link, a Multi-Frequency Time Division Multiple Access (MF-TDMA) may be used, e.g. DVB-RCS2 standard, (EN 301 542-2).

Other transmission techniques, although possible, are not too suitable for a satellite link which is mainly a clear line-of–sight channel, with a very high SNR sensitivity. The CDMA technique generates self-interference and is therefore less power efficient. On the other hand, S-MIM (ETSI TS 102 721-1 that has been developed to address the self-interference issue), is too complex for cost-effective implementation on board the satellite. The OFDM technique, which has been adopted for use in cellular and wireless LAN networks, provides significant advantages for obstructed multipath rich channel, but it requires a large HPA back-off and is more sensitive to phase noise.

In addition, the benefits of all the above techniques in multi-path channels do not come into play in a Ku-band, stationary terminal scenario. 1. Forward Link The forward link of the present invention is somewhat similar to a DVB- S2/S2X link but is characterized by having at least the following differences when compared with a DVB-S2/S2X link: A modified Physical Layer (PL) header provided by the present invention that is characterized in that it: (a) enables combined low-SNR and high-SNR adaptive coding and modulation (ACM); and (b) includes a larger payload of mode­ setting bits.

Base-band frames have a constant length in symbols (and may carry a number of bits that varies by the modulation currently used). 2. Return Link The return link of the present invention is somewhat similar to a DVB- RCS2 link but is characterized by having at least the following difference when compared with a DVB-RCS2 link: certain MAC messages include additional, non­ standard information such as the terminal’s location and sub-population assignment.

Physical Layer (PHY) 1. Forward Link- 21 - 266379/3 The forward link PHY is somewhat similar to the definition provided in the DVB-S2/S2X standard, but is characterized by having at least the following differences when compared with a DVB-S2/S2X link: An extended Physical Layer Header (PL-Header) includes a longer Start Of Frame (“SOF”) sequence in order to ensure a first-time acquisition, and a longer Physical Layer Signaling (“PLS”) field which comprises more signaling bits. The PLS is preferably used to signal at least one of the following: - Forward Link Frame and Super-frame boundaries; - Terminal grouping; and - Terminal alert messages For low-SNR operation, the baseline header described above may be extended to include a longer SOF sequence (based on the standard SOF), and additional FEC bits for the PLS field. To maintain a constant base-band frame length, low-SNR frames may use punctured LDPC codes. The forward link may be capable of supporting mixed operation of baseline (high-SNR) and low-SNR base-band frames. 2. Return Link The return link PHY is somewhat similar to that as defined by DVB- RCS2 PHY.

Transmit-Receive Scheduling The present invention provides a transmit-receive framing mechanism that greatly simplifies scheduling and streamline satellite and beam switchover.

Moreover, it transfers most of the complexity of routing and handover from the satellite to the gateway and the terminals. This comes at the cost of modest framing delay and a somewhat lower terminal transmission duty cycle (75% for the example of 4 sub­ frames, compared with a best-case of over 90%).

Frames' Scheduling When implementing the DVB-S2/S2X standard, the term “a baseband frame” relates to a frame that contains a number of payload (user information) bits, which varies between 2432 to 53760. The destination of this information can be to one user (a terminal) or to many users (when operating in a broadcast mode, or in a time­ division mode).- 22 - 266379/3 A base-band header is added to these payload bits and the whole frame is then encoded, modulated to symbols and framed into a Physical Layer Frame (PL­ Frame), which contains between 3330 to 33282 symbols. Obviously, a terminal receiving such a PL-frame has first to decode the header of the PL-frame, in order to be able to access the data contained in that frame.

The symbols may be transmitted at different rates, depending on the allocated bandwidth at the satellite. In the following examples, we assume a rate of 500 Msps (which is supported by High-Throughput satellites), so that if one takes for example a fixed PL-frame of 32400 symbols it would take 64.8 microseconds for that PL-frame to be transmitted. Note that 500Msps. Other transmission rates may be 36 Msps, or 72 Msps, which are currently more common. At these rates, the time required to transmit a 32400 symbols long PL-frame would be 0.9 msec or 0.45 msec, respectively.

A sub-frame of 0.5 msec comprises about 8 PL-Frames when using a 500 Msps rate. However, when dealing with longer PL-frames, the length of the frames according to the present disclosure will have to be modified, since a PL-frame cannot be divided into several sub-frames.

In the following disclosure a time period of 2 msec is exemplified as being associated with a communication frame, which is the equivalent of having 16 PL­ frames. A super-frame that comprises 5 communication frames, will therefore comprise 80 PL-frames.

In other words, the term “sub-frame” refers herein throughout the specification and claims to an entity that comprises several PL-frames, each of which comprising a base-band frame.

Fig. 1 illustrates a prior art transmission sequence/channel of communications in a satellite network, where full dummy frames are transmitted between communication frames, when data is not available at the ingress of the transmitter. The purpose of inserting these dummy frames is to achieve a rate matching between the allocated bandwidth for transmission and the actual transmission rate.

Figs. 2 and 3 illustrate two non-limiting examples of communication channel CH transmitted by the transmission method according to certain embodiments of the present invention. The communication channel shows two transmitted communication - 23 - 266379/3 data frames encoded in the channels signal, Data Frame i and Data Frame i+1 , whereby the signal is transmitted over a communication channel with a recess time slot R between the communication of certain consecutive data frames thereof Data Frame i and Data Frame i+1. During the recess time slot R no signal, and/or signal with substantially reduced power is transmitted over the communication channel. Optionally only dummy frame header(s) H and/or optionally pilot signals P are transmitted instead of a full dummy frame's payload (DD in Fig.1). To this end, In the example illustrated in this Fig. 2, two optional pilot signals P are illustrated to be inserted during the interval at which the dummy frame's payload data DD would have been transmitted if the prior art protocol illustrated in Fig. 1, were to be followed). Fig. 3 demonstrates a case whereby only an optional header H of dummy frames are transmitted, instead of the full dummy frames. It should be understood, and also discussed below that actually both the dummy frame headers H and/or pilot signals P are optional and may be used to provide certain consistency/computability (to some degree of efficiency) with conventional continuous mode receivers.

Fig. 4A illustrates a conventional satellite multi-beam technique in which the satellite's S transmitter transmits a plurality of continuous mode communication beams CB simultaneously to cover different geographical regions. Fig. 4B, illustrates a multi­ beam technique according to the present invention, in which the satellite's transmission system 300 configured and operable according to the technique of the present invention, (as described in more details below with reference to Fig. 4C) transmits a plurality of burst mode communication beams BB for covering a plurality of geographical regions.

Each burst communication beam may include a plurality of communication channels communicated to the respective geographical regions it covers. According to this embodiment of the present invention, recess time slots (R in Figs. 2 and 3 e.g. which may be truncated dummy frames in which the dummy payload is not transmitted) are inserted at some of the beams also at times when there is data to send along these beams. This is as opposed to a conventional standard complying system illustrated in Fig. 4A.

Optionally as will be described with reference to the scheduler module 350 below, the timings of the recess time slots of different communication channels may be arranged by the scheduler so as to accommodate transmission of additional burst mode communication beams BB, (e.g. more than possible by the conventional continuous - 24 - 266379/3 mode communication techniques). This may be achieved for example by dynamic scheduling of the communication frame transmission in each of the beams and/or communication channels thereof.

Fig. 4C is a block diagram showing a communication transmission system 300 (satellite communication system) configured and operable according to an embodiment of the present invention. The system 300 includes a data provider module 310 configured and operable for providing data to be communicated to one or more terminals (communication receivers) over one or more forward communication channels, a communication frames generator module 320 configured and operable to segregate the data into a plurality of communication frame data payload portions, and a transmission channel signal encoder 330, configured and operable for generating/encoding the communication frames in a transmission signal to be transmitted via the forward communication channel(s).

According to the technique of the present invention, the transmission channel data encoder 330 is configured to operate in burst communication mode (or in other words is capable of operating in a non-continuous transmission mode), in which the transmission over the forward communication channel may include bursts of signal transmission (i.e. occurring during a certain statically or dynamically determined transmission time slots), in which a signal encoding one or more of the communication frames is transmitted, and one or more recess time slots between the transmission bursts (between some or all of the transmission time slots), during which no signal is transmitted over the channel, or possibly a signal of substantially reduced power is transmitted.

Accordingly, in some embodiments of the present invention the system also includes a transmission module 340 configured and operable for transmitting the transmission signal in burst communication mode. For instance in some embodiments of the present invention the transmission module 340 is adapted for transmitting the encoded signals of the communication channels/beams in a time-division multiplexing (TDM) transmission. A person of ordinary skill in the art will readily appreciate the configuration and operation of a transmitter module operative according to the TDM scheme.

The transmission module 340 may be adapted to operate during the transmission time slots associated with a respective communication channel for transmitting the - 25 - 266379/3 communication frames of the respective communication channel during the these transmission time slots, and recess from transmitting signals associated with the respective communication channel during the recess time slots.

Accordingly, during the recess time slots no signals pertaining to the respective communication channel are encoded/transmitted by modules 330 and/or 340, or possibly in some cases only a residual signal (e.g. which includes only headers and pilots comprising predetermined code words) with significantly reduced power is transmitted (e.g. which average power is reduced for example to not more than 0.1% of the power of the signal in the transmission time slots) at least as compared to the power of the signal transmission during the transmission time slots. This is possible because headers and pilots (which typically encode sequences including at least one of certain predetermined/known key-words and which may therefore be detercted by convolution with the keywords) can be detected with SNR as low as -2dB, if, for example, a DVB- S2 waveform is used. This is as opposed to data payload portions of the signal, which generally encode un-known symbol sequences pertaining to un-known data, and therefore require much higher SNRs, as high as 30dB, in order to be received accurately and reliably. Therefore, the header and/or pilots, in cases where they are used, can be transmitted with down to about 1/1000 of the power used for transmittin data carrying postions of the signal.

This is an extreme example as the received signal strength may limit effective SNR to a level as low as 5dB. In this case the reduced power of the residual header and pilot signal could go down to 20% of the data power. In each case the total interference power to other beams is reduced as described above, while receivers which are not capable for burst reception can still be supported. In a beam hopping scenario where a recess gap in one beam transmission is used for transmission to other beams, it is not possible to transmit reduced power header or pilots in one beam simultaneously with other beams. Hence in this case only receivers capable of burst reception are supported.

To this end, the technique of the present invention obviates a need for transmitting dummy frames and/or dummy payload data in between the actual communication data frames which are transmitted over the communication channel.

This is achieved by operating in burst communication mode for transmitting the required data communication frames during certain transmission time slots while not transmitting on that channel during the recess time slot between them.- 26 - 266379/3 This has several advantages over conventional continuous mode communication techniques, as follows: (i) Reducing the interference between transmission channels and/or transmission beams, particularly in cases where the channels/beams overlap in time and are proximal/overlap in frequency and/or in their geographical coverages (distance between them). This may in-turn yield higher signal to noise/interference ratio(s) (SINR) when receiving the signal of the transmitted communication channel and therefore permit encoding data higher data rates in the communication channel, while using the same frequency-band (e.g. as supported for example by information theory considerations, for example the Shannon–Hartley theorem). (ii) Enabling efficient allocation/distribution of data bandwidth, of the total data bandwidth available by the transmission system 300 (e.g. available to a communication satellite), to a plurality of communication channels and/or communication beams. In other words this permits to allocate higher number of communication channels and/or more beams based on the same resources of the satellite, since the waste of bandwidth on transmission of dummy frames and/or dummy data payloads is reduced.

As will be further clarified below, this advantage of the technique of the present invention, is further enhanced in embodiments of the invention in which a scheduler 350 is employed for carrying out dynamic allocation (e.g. per demand) of transmission time, and hence of dynamic allocation of data bandwidth to different communication channels/beams served by the satellite. (iii) Additional advantage of the technique of the present invention, is that it yields a much more optimized energy consumption scheme since, no/less energy is consumed on transmission of dummy/unneeded data.

To this end, according to some embodiments of the present invention the transmission channel signal encoder 330 is configured and operable for introducing one or more recess time slots in between the one or more of the communication data frames which are encoded in each channel/beams, so as to encode the data frames in the communication channel in a burst communication mode. Here, generally no dummy - 27 - 266379/3 payload data (DD in Fig. 1) is introduced to the communication channel/beam. In some embodiments the transmission channel signal encoder 330 is configured and operable for encoding the communication time frame in a time-division multiplexing (TDM) scheme in the communication channel signal(s) it generates. To this end, the transmission channel signal encoder 330 may optionally include a TDM signal encoder module 334 configured and for applying time-division multiplexing to the data to be encoded in the channels signal. Time-division multiplexing techniques and various configurations of TDM signal encoders are generally known to those versed in the art, and for conciseness will not be repeated here.

However, as also indicated above, coping with the burst communication mode of the present invention may be difficult for conventional communication receivers which are operable in continuous communication mode. This is because during the recess time periods, at which no signal is transmitted, such receivers may lose synchronization with the communication channel and/or dis-acquire the channels' carrier frequency (e.g. due to differences in the internal clocks of the receiver and transmitter), and therefore may require prolonged time extending over several communication frames to re-acquire and/or re-synchronize with the signal of the communication channel once it re-appears after a recess time slot/period.

One way to mitigate this problem according to the present invention, is by using novel communication receiver configuration, which is configured to operate/receive signal from a burst mode communication channel. Such a receiver will be complementary with the transmission system 300 operating in a burst communication mode. The configuration and operation of such a communication receiver 200 according to some embodiments of the present invention are discussed in more details below with reference to Figs. 7A to 8C. More specifically, the communication receiver 200 of the present invention is adapted to receive bursts of communication signals from a remote communication system (e.g. from the transmission system 300), and for processing at least a portion of a signal received in communication channel during each burst, after a recess time period during which communication frames were not transmitted in said communication channel, to determine a carrier frequency of the communication channel, based on a single (e.g. first) communication frame appearing in the communication channel after the recess time period. This facilitates implementation of an efficient burst mode communication between the transmission system 300 and the - 28 - 266379/3 complementary receiver 200 since the receiver does not require several frames to lock- on to the signal of the communication channel after the recess time, but actually locks on to it from the first communication frame it receives; e.g. based on any one or more predetermined code words (unique sequences) which may appear on the header of that communication frame. Accordingly, practically no data bandwidth and/or no time delay is wasted/invested in the re-acquisition of the signal after the recess time periods of the burst communication mode. This makes the communication by the complementary transmission system 300 and communication receiver 200 highly efficient in terms of the data rates/ bandwidth, energy consumption and interference between channel.

Alternatively, or additionally, another way for mitigating this problem, in cases where one or more conventional receivers, operating in continuous communication mode are also "listening" and should receive the communication channel signals from the transmission system 300, is by shortening the durations of the effective recess times at which no signal is transmitted in the communication channel. To this end, according to some embodiments the transmission channel signal encoder 330 is further configured and operable for introducing one or more intermediate/additional communication sequences into the signal of the communication channel, so as to practically shorten the durations at which no signal is transmitted over the communication channel to be below a certain predetermined maximal duration. More specifically, in some embodiments/implementations/scenarios the transmission channel signal encoder 330 of the present invention is adapted to encode, a recess header data sequence H (also referred to herein above as dummy frame' header) in the signal of the communication channel. The duration of the recess header data sequence H shortens the effective time of the recess time slot between the communication frames preceding and proceeding it.

Typically, such recess header data sequences may be encoded at respective recess header time slots preceding respective recess time slots. This is illustrated for example in Figs. 2 and 3 above in which the optional recess header data sequences H in the channel are illustrated. Alternatively or additionally, in some embodiments/implementations/scenarios the transmission channel signal encoder 330 of the present invention is adapted to encode one or more (optional) pilot sequences P within the time duration of the recess time slots of the signal of the communication channel, so as to practically split the recess time slot to several parts which durations does not exceed the certain predetermined maximal duration. This is illustrated for - 29 - 266379/3 example in Fig. 2 above in which the optional pilot sequences P in the channel are illustrated.

Accordingly, in any of the above techniques, whether by introducing recess­ header sequences and/or pilot sequences, or both, to the channel's signal, the transmission channel signal encoder 330 may be configured and operable such that the durations at which no signal is transmitted over the communication channel is below a certain predetermined maximal duration, whereby this certain predetermined maximal duration sets up a threshold limit above which, statistically, the signal (and/or it carrier frequency and/or its synchronization) are not expected to be lost by the receiver (except maybe to extreme/rare cases), even if the receiver would be operating in the conventional continuous communication mode. The predetermined maximal duration threshold may generally be selected according to the bandwidth of the communication and the specified stabilities of the clocks' (e.g. internal-oscillators') used in the communicating transmission system 300 (transmitter 340) and communication receiver(s) 200 (or terminal(s) 100) which exchange the communication of that bandwidth.

The transmission channel signal encoder 330 may be configured and operable for introducing recess header data sequences H and/or pilot sequences P in to the recess time slots (at the beginning and/or middle thereof) in every case where total time duration of the recess time slots exceed this predetermined threshold. Optionally, the recess header data sequences H and/or pilot sequences sequence P may be encoded with predetermined code words identifiable by the receivers, so that to allow the receivers to maintain synchronization with (e.g. update-the/retune-to) the carrier frequency and/or timing of the communication channel. Optionally, in some embodiments the transmission module 340 is configured and operable for transmitting the recess header data H and/or said pilot sequences P is with reduced power as compared to the power of the signal transmission during said data time slots.

As indicated above, in some embodiments of the present invention the transmission system 300 is configured and operable in a multi-beam mode for transmitting a plurality of beams having different respective geographical coverages respectively. In this case, each communication channel of the one or more forward communication channels may be is associated with at least one beam of the plurality of - 30 - 266379/3 beams, and designated for one or more terminals residing in a geographical coverage of the beam.

The phrases beam and/or communication beam is used herein to designate a transmission beam of electromagnetic (EM) radiation (typically radio frequency), which is transmitted by the transmission system 300 towards (to cover) a certain predetermined geographical coverage area. A beam may be for instance formed by the directional properties of the antenna 305 to which the transmitter 340 is connected and through which the signal is transmitted, and/or it may be controllably formed to be controllably/adjustably directed to cover predetermined geographical area by using a beam former module. Such a beam former 345 is optionally included in the transmitter, and can be operated with the configuration of antenna 305 as a phased array antenna including a plurality of antenna elements. To this end, the beam former 345 may be adapted to receive the signal(s) of the communication channels that are to be transmitted by each beam (e.g. the signals here may be being a sequence of data frames associated with the respective communication channels to be included in the beam), generate therefrom a plurality of corresponding elemental signals to be transmitted by respective elements of a phased array antenna (e.g. 305) with the phases and possibly frequencies of such elemental signals being adjusted such that the beam carrying the signals of the one or more channels is directed to cover a predetermined geographical location, to which the respective channels should be transmitted. Indeed, the principles of beam forming are generally known to persons of ordinary skilled in the art and should not be repeated here, except for stating that the technique of the present invention may use beamforming for generating/transmitting one or more groups beams for covering different geographical areas, whereby each group of beams may include one or more beams that can be simultaneously formed by the beam-former 345 and simultaneous transmitted by the transmitter 340 (via antenna 305) to concurrently cover several geographical areas.

In this connection, it should be noted here that the phrase communication channel is used herein to designate a data stream (typically burst/non-continuous data stream of data) which is communicated from the transmission system (e.g. of a satellite) to one or more communication receivers (e.g. being terminals adapted to receive data from the satellite). The communication channel is generally formed as a plurality of data frames designated (e.g. by parameters encoded in their headers and/or by - 31 - 266379/3 predetermined timings thereof and/or by their respective frequencies) to be received by certain on or more communication receivers (e.g. terminals), listening the forward communication channel from the satellite.

Since the number of beams, which can be simultaneously transmitted (e.g. which belong to the same group), as well as their widths (angular extent) and their respective directions, may be limited by certain known beamforming/beam former 345 limitations (which will be readily appreciated by those verse in the art), the present invention facilitates the transmission of plurality of groups of beams at distinct time schedules for each groups so as to accommodated broader geographical coverage.

In this connection it should be understood that according to the technique of the present invention the signals of each transmitted beam may include, or be composed of, the signals of one or more communication channels. To this end, the transmitter module 340 may include a beam encoder module 342 configured and operable for receiving, from the transmission channel signal encoder 330, the signals (e.g. the encoded communication data frames) of a plurality communication channels, in association with the communication beam(s) BB over which each of the communication channels should be transmitted, and process the encoded communication data frames of channels that are associated with each respective beam to form a unified beam’s signal encoding all these communication data frames of the channels participating/transmitted in the respective beam. For example, in some embodiments the beam encoder module 342, is adapted to encode the communication frames of the plurality of communication channels which are to be transmitted in each beam, in a time division multiplexing, in the beam’s signal. Alternatively or additionally, in some embodiments the beam encoder module 342, is adapted to encode the communication frames of the plurality of communication channels which are to be transmitted in each beam, in a frequency division multiplexing, in the beam’s signal. Yet alternatively or additionally, other techniques for multiplexing the plurality of channels on the same beam may be employed by the beam encoder module 342, Then, in case beamforming is used for directing the beam(s) to specific/predetermined coverage areas, the beam signal (in cases where the beam encoder module 342 is used), or the signals of the communication channels (as obtained from the transmission channel signal encoder 330) may be further processed by the optional beam former 345 to generated a beam formed signal of the beam which is then - 32 - 266379/3 transmitted in directional manner via antenna 305 (being phase array in this case).

Indeed, groups of a plurality (one or more beams) may be simultaneously generated ant transmitted.

Indeed, the number of simultaneous beams that can be transmitted may be generally limited by the properties of the beam former (and/or the number of antenna elements used), as well as by the bandwidth of the system. Therefore, in order to further exploit the available resources of the transmission system 300, with improved efficiency in some embodiment of the present invention the transmission system 300 is configured and operable for operating in a beam-hopping mode. In this mode, that two or more groups of beams which are transmitted at distinct time intervals. Each group of beams may generally include one or more beam (up to the upper limit imposed by the data bandwidth and/or beamforming parameters) covering one or more respective geographical areas. To this end, each group of beams establishes at least one of the forward communication channels transmitted by the system 300.

The system further includes a transmission scheduler module 350 configured and operable for scheduling transmission of the two or more groups of beams. The transmission scheduler module 350 is configured and operable for scheduling the transmission data time slots at which the communication frames of the communication channel(s) of each group of beams are transmitted. More specifically according to some embodiments the transmission scheduler module 350 is adapted to schedule the communication frames of the channels of each group of beams so as to aggregate together the plurality recess timeslots R of those communication channels to form a prolonged recess time slot which duration is long enough so that the transmission of a different group of one or more beams can be accommodated in that prolonged time slot.

In turn, the transmission channel signal encoder 330 and/or the beam encoder module 342 may be connected to the transmission scheduler module 350 and may be adapted to encode the communication frames of each of the one or more channels of each beam in accordance with the scheduling of the scheduler. Accordingly, in this way the system 300 may be provide an efficient beam hopping implementation.

Reference is made to Figs. 4D and 4E which are flow diagrams exemplifying the operation of the transmission scheduler module 350 according to two embodiments of the present invention in which it is configured and operable in static or dynamic scheduling modes.- 33 - 266379/3 As shown the transmission system 300 may include a data provider module 310 configured and operable for providing data to be communicated/transmitted by the system 300 towards different geographical areas, via different beams. In the non­ limiting example of Figs. 4D and 4E, K geographical areas are considered which are covered by respective beams Beam1-BeamK. The data provider 310 may be for example adapted to obtain/receive the data to be remitted in the beams in the form of data packet/frames communicated to the system 300 from a ground station, such as a data gateway, whereby each packet may designate the geographical area to which it should be transmitted and/or the channel/beam in the scope of which it should be transmitted. The figures illustrate Beam1-Data to BeamK-Data which include the data packets that should be transmitted via each beam. The data packets in Beam1-Data to BeamK-Data may by themselves represent communication frames that should be transmitted by the respective beams, or in some cases they only include the payload data that should be transmitted and the communication frame generator 320 encapsulate those in respective communication frames (e.g. by adding thereto respective headers, such as physical layer communication headers. Accordingly, the data provider 310 obtains a plurality of communication data frames which should be communicated by the different beams Beam1-BeamK.

The obtained communication data frames are classified to the different beams based on for example any one or more of the following: - The channel through which communication data frame should be transmitted and the associated beam(s) in which this channel is transmitted; - The geographical area towards which the data frame should be transmitted and the associated beam covering it; and/or - Specific information indicating through which beam each communication data frame should be transmitted.

Accordingly at the end, as illustrated in the figure, the communication data frame are actually classified/placed in K bins BIN-1 to BIN-K respectively representing the collections of communication data frames that should be transmitted by the respective beams Beam1-BeamK.

In turn the transmission scheduler module 350, operates a scheduler transmission procedure (e.g. loop), in which it schedules for transmission one or more of the communication data frames accumulated in each bin by the respective beam - 34 - 266379/3 associated with the beam. In other word, during the scheduler's transmission procedure the scheduler 350 consecutively accesses the bins and upon accessing each bin (e.g.

BIN2) it acquires certain numbers of communication data frames from the accessed bin (e.g. BIN2) and forwards those for encoding and transmission by the modules 330 and 340, while operating he transmitter 340 to transmitted those communication data frames of the specific bin (e.g. BIN2) in the framework of a corresponding beam (e.g. Beam2) directed to the respective geographical area to which those frames are designated.

Accordingly the scheduler may truncate those communication frames which are transmitted, from their respective bin (e.g. BIN2). It should be understood that in general the consecutive manner in which the transmission scheduler module 350 accesses the bins may be a serially ordered manner (e.g. BIN1 -> BIN2 -> … BINK) and/or in any different order (e.g. prioritized order or random).

Turning now more specifically to Fig. 4D, according to some embodiments of the present invention the transmission scheduler module 350, operates in a static scheduling mode. Each beam is allocated with a certain fixed time duration FTD during which it is transmitted, regardless of the numbers/lengths of the communication data frames that should be transmitted by the beam. For instance the fixed time duration FTD may be a duration accommodating the durations of one or more super frames (e.g.

DVB-S2 and DVB-S2X super frames), in which one or more communication data frames may be included.

Indeed, the fixed time durations FTD of different beams may be different in their lengths however they are static in the sense that their duration does not change regardless of the quantity of data (accumulated in the bins) which should be transmitted by each beam.

Typically, in some cases this static scheme is implemented in order to accommodate backward compatibility with communication protocols requiring that the transmission duration of each beam burst, in a beam-hopping mode), would last a certain fixed duration (e.g. the duration of a predetermined super frame length) or an integer multiples of this fixed duration. To this end, in this mode the scheduler module 350, and/or the transmitter 340, may be configured and operable such that the transmission of burst of a beam lasts a certain predetermined duration regardless of the amount of data to be transmitted. In such implementations the transmission channel signal encoder 330, may be adapted to generate, for each transmitted beam, complete - 35 - 266379/3 super frame(s) of a predetermined fixed duration(s) while encoding therein the communication data frames that should be included in the beam and in case there is not enough data (not enough communication data frames) to fill an entire supper frame(s), further pad the rest of supper frame(s) with dummy symbols. In turn, in this mode the transmitter 340 transmits the super frames (padded or not) in their respective beams.

Turning now to Fig. 4E, according to the present invention there is yet provided an alternative transmission scheduling scheme, dynamic scheduling mode, according to which the scheduler 350 is configured to operate in some embodiments of the present invention. In the dynamic mode there is no predetermined allocation time durations for the transmissions of each beam, but instead variable time durations TD1, TD2 to TDK, are dynamically allocated to the different beams, to each bursts thereof, as per demand/requirement so as to more efficiently exploit the resources of the transmission system. To this end, in this case there is no need to transmit dummy symbols and/or to pad super frames which such symbols and the time extent of super frames (if any) transmitted in each burst of each beam may vary per demand, and optimized to maximize the services provided by the transmission system.

In some embodiments the transmission scheduler module 350 is configured to operate in an un-prioritized dynamic scheduling mode. In this mode the scheduler 350 may for example operate a scheduler's transmission procedure in which consecutively accesses the different bins (e.g. in a predetermined order BIN1 -> BIN2 -> … BINK) and upon accessing each bin (e.g. BIN2) it acquires all of communication data frames accumulated in the accessed bin (e.g. BIN2) to that time, and forwards those for encoding and transmission by the modules 330 and 340. Accordingly the transmitter 340 operates to transmit all the communication data frames of the specific bin (e.g.

BIN2) in the framework of a corresponding beam (e.g. Beam2), which is directed to the respective geographical area to which those frames are designated.

In some embodiments the transmission scheduler module 350 is configured to operate in a prioritized dynamic scheduling mode. In this mode the data provider 310 further operates to classify the communication frames it puts in each bin, also to plurality of different priorities. For example in the non-limiting example of Fig. 4E three priority classes are set as follows: PR1 (highest) , PR2 (intermediate) and PR3 (lowest). Each priority e.g. from the priorities PR1 (highest) , PR2 (intermediate) and PR3, may be associated with a certain maximal time delay threshold (e.g. PD1 to PD3 - 36 - 266379/3 respectively) indicated in the maximal time delay on which the communication data frames of this priority are permitted to be delayed before transmission. The classification to priorities may be conducted based on various considerations, for example any one or more of the following: (i) The nature of the payload data in the communication frames. E.g. assigning: high priority to Real-Time data communications such as live streams; regular/intermediate priority to standard data transmissions; and low priority to background data transmissions such as backup operations. (ii) The channels with which the communication data frames are associated.

Whereby some channels (e.g. possibly associated with different customers of the system) may be associated with higher/better service levels and therefore higher priority and /or other channels may be associated with lower service levels and thus lower priorities.

Other prioritizing schemes may be employed as well.

In turn in this mode, prioritized dynamic scheduling mode, the scheduler 350 may for example operate a scheduler's transmission procedure in which it consecutively accesses the different bins (e.g. in a predetermined order BIN1 -> BIN2 -> … BINK) and upon accessing each bin (e.g. BIN2) it acquires all of communication data frames that are accumulated only in the highest level of priority (e.g. PD1) accumulated in the accessed bin (e.g. BIN2) to that time, and forwards those for encoding and transmission by the modules 330 and 340. Accordingly the highest level priority communication frames are transmitted as soon as possible, Additionally in this mode, prioritized dynamic scheduling mode, the scheduler 350 may further operate an additional procedure, priority update procedure in which it updates the permitted time delays of the remaining communication data frames of the different priorities, and accordingly updates their current priorities (e.g. leave them in their previous priority and/or advancing them to higher priority) based on whether the relation between their updated permitted time delays and the maximal time delay threshold (e.g. PD1 to PD3) of the respective priority levels (e.g. PR1 to PR3).

In this manner an efficient prioritized beam hopping mode operation is implemented with reduced transmission of dummy symbols and/or without dummy symbols at all, and with priorities transmission of communication frames in the different beams.- 37 - 266379/3 Yet another embodiment of the dynamic scheduler maybe, referring again to Fig.4E whereby transmission of a packet in a bin is made when the bin has reached a predetermined capacity level, or when some predetermined timer set according to the time delays (e.g. PD1- PDK) has expired, such that the order of transmission is not fixed yet no dummy frames are added to the transmission.

FIG. 5 illustrates an example scheme for transmit-receive scheduling, for an example set of parameters, wherein: Forward link base-band frames are grouped into 2 mS long frames. Each frame is divided into four equal-length (0.5 mS long) sub-frames, each consisting of an integer number of e.g. DVB-S2 or DVB-S2X base-band frames. The satellite forward link carries four equal-rate streams (e.g. DVB-S2 or DVB-S2X), each occupying one sub­ frame within a frame (for example, for a single-carrier-per-beam 500 Msps carrier, there will be four 125 Msps streams).

The terminal population is divided into four equal-size sub-populations. The division is done in a way that maximizes randomness across geography (and therefore within any single beam at any given time). Each sub-population of terminals receives the stream carried by one sub-frame within a frame. This division is fixed (i.e. a static division).

Framing increases the forward link delay by the duration of three sub-frames – 1.5 mS in the example discussed above. Each sub-population (served by one of the four forward link sub-frames) may be further divided into groups. Each such group is served by a fraction of the sub-frame capacity, designated by a time-slice number (as defined for example by DVB-S2, Annex M) thereby representing the group. This makes it possible for a terminal to power down its receiver for the duration of a base-band frame as soon as it has determined that the frame’s group (time-slice) number is not the one associated with the very same terminal.

There is an integer number of return link TDMA slots within the time period of a forward link sub-frame. A return link transmission time is allocated for a terminal during the three sub-frames within a frame, when it is not receiving communications.

Return link capacity allocation takes into account satellite-terminal delay to ensure that capacity assignments (made in the satellite’s return link time frame) are compatible with the terminal’s transmit time window (as illustrated for example in FIG. 1) .- 38 - 266379/3 Decreasing the frame duration reduces delay on one hand but also reduces the effectiveness of grouping on the other hand .

Increasing (or decreasing) the number n of sub-frames within a frame increases (or decreases) the transmit time window (to 1-1/n of a frame) and increases (or decreases) the delay somewhat (to 1-1/n of a frame).

Transmit-receive scheduling and return link capacity assignment are preferably signaled in layer 2. Their implementation in the satellite and the terminal is preferably managed by software.

The assignment of the terminal's sub-population and group is preferably carried out at the gateway. Each packet sent over the gateway-to-satellite link carries this data as side-information, thereby relieving the satellite from the task of storing mappings for the entire terminals’ population.

Either the satellite or the gateway, allocate return link capacity. Upon session initiation (and preferably during hand-over), the terminal provides the satellite with the necessary information on its current location and sub-population assignment, and this data may then be cached at the satellite for the various active terminals.

Terminal Alerting In order to save power, terminals that are not transmitting or receiving communications, enter preferably a stand-by mode in which all but a minimal set of their sub-systems, are powered down. An inactive terminal comes out of its stand-by mode when either (a) a packet arrives at its local interface; or (b) it is addressed by the satellite over the forward link; or (c) it has to perform an infrequent housekeeping task such as receiving updated system information. Out of these three cases, case (b) involves the following features of the air interface: Each M – for example five – forward link frames will be grouped into a Super­ frame (10 mS long for 5 X 2 mS frames). The start of a super-frame is signaled by the PLS.

Part of the PLS payload is dedicated to terminal alerting – signaling terminals that are currently in a stand-by mode that there is queued forward link traffic addressed to them, which will be transmitted within the next sub-frame. The terminal altering channel within the PLS may use time division multiplexing over a super-frame in a way that any single terminal only needs to demodulate a small number of (and with very - 39 - 266379/3 high probability only one) base-band frame PL headers at a known offset within a known sub-frame in the super-frame. Thus, a terminal in a stand-by mode, will power up – once every 10 mS for the above example – the receiver blocks needed for demodulating one forward link base-band frame PL header (and very infrequently, a small number of subsequent headers), before returning to its stand-by mode.

A 10 mS super-frame introduces an average / worst-case delay in start-up of forward link traffic of 5 / 10 mS, respectively.

Return Link Burst Synchronization As specified by the DVB-RCS2 ETSI standard, a master oscillator at the satellite generates the time base for the Network Clock Reference (“NCR”), used by the terminals to time their return link bursts. This oscillator is locked to the forward link symbol clock, and the frequencies are chosen so that the terminal can convert the timing of the start of a sub-frame to an NCR value. This makes it possible for a terminal that comes out of stand-by mode to re-acquire the NCR as soon as it has demodulated the first base-band frame header.

Satellite Tracking and Handover Enabling Features In order to make satellite tracking and handover as efficient and seamless as possible, the following is preferably carried out: a. At installation, the terminal is programmed with its geo-location, with a high degree accuracy (for example within 50m). The terminal is also coarsely 3-axis aligned (in North-South orientation and 2-axis tilt). b. During commissioning, the terminal executes a calibration routine that fine-align its orientation and tilt, based on the satellite reception. c. The satellites use GPS receivers or an equivalent gateway-referenced mechanism to establish a system-wide Time of Day (ToD) time base, and the gateways are configured to align themselves to the time base. The DVB-RCS2 NCR may serve for this purpose . d. The satellites broadcast periodically over the forward link of each beam, Layer 2 information that specifies the system’s satellite constellation – orbits and satellite positions – to an accuracy that would enable a terminal to predict the location of any - 40 - 266379/3 satellite for a period such as up to 12 hours ahead, to within an accuracy of for example 100 m (300 nS one-way propagation time). e. All gateways and terminals execute identical, bit accurate coverage mapping routines that use the information associated with (a) and (d) and timed by (c), in order to determine satellite coverage of a terminal .

Terminal’s Antenna Tracking Given sections (a) through (d) above, the terminal’s antenna is able to track satellites without relying on signal strength indication. A terminal that has been in a stand-by mode for a pre-determined period of time, say 12 hours, activates itself for a period of time needed to receive up-to-date constellation information.

Coverage mapping routine (e) also provides the terminal with the satellite’s Doppler frequency shift. The terminal may then use this information to: - Anticipate the resulting carrier frequency shift when acquiring and tracking the forward channel; - Correct the local NCR time-base; - Pre-correct the carrier frequency for return link bursts, so they would arrive at the satellite receiver with no shift.

Inter-beam (Intra-satellite) Switchover All forward links generated by a satellite across all its beams may be synchronized at the symbol, base-band frame, sub-frame, frame and super-frame levels.

Coverage mapping routine (e), executed by the terminal, determines the frame at which the terminal must switch beams. The terminal programs its receive synthesizer during the preceding transmit sub-frame and it is then able to acquire the first receive sub­ frame (or, in a stand-by mode, receive the alert signal) over the new beam, with the same accuracy as while dwelling in the former beam.

Satellite and beam routing to a terminal is preferably determined by the gateway and signaled to the satellite through side-information attached to every forward link packet. The gateway, running the same coverage mapping routine (e) as the terminal, determines the timing of terminal beam switching and route forward link traffic accordingly. In order to minimize forward link queuing delay during a beam switch, either (a) the gateway is made aware of sub-framing when managing forward link - 41 - 266379/3 queuing, or (b) the satellite is provided with data “expiration” information and prioritize traffic to terminals that are about to switch away from one of its beams.

With the exception of short and infrequent session initiating messages, return link transmissions from a terminal can only be made after a capacity request was sent to the satellite and a capacity assignment was made and received in response to the request made. The satellite responds to capacity request messages with a tightly controlled response time: the terminal receives the assignment a pre-defined number of sub-frames after it had made the request and – unless the return channel is heavily overloaded – the assignment will be for a (small) fixed number of sub-frames in the future.

In order to minimize interruption to traffic to and from terminals during a beam switch, forward- and return-link switching use the procedure illustrated in the following FIG. 6.

As may be seen in FIG. 6 the satellite accepts requests for capacity allocation for the new beam that are received over the old beam. When anticipating a beam switchover, the terminal makes – over the old beam – a request for capacity allocation in the new beam, at such time that the assignment is received just prior the switchover (Request 1 in FIG. 6). There will only be at most one other such request pending from a given terminal. While the request is pending, the terminal continues to receive forward link and transmit (as was previously assigned) return link traffic over the old beam.

The gateway re-routes traffic to the new beam at the time it should start arriving at the terminal, immediately following the switchover. There will be a transition phase (approximately coinciding with the time the cross-beam capacity request is pending) when the satellite receives the terminal's traffic over the old beam and transmits traffic to the very same terminal over the new beam.

At the switchover, the terminal re-programs its transmit and receive LO frequency synthesizers during the receive and transmit sub-frames, respectively.

Preferably, inter-beam (intra-satellite) beam switching does not in itself involve any air interface messaging.

Beam selection and switching decisions are made by the gateway and the terminal: the satellite does not have to track the switchover process.

Inter-satellite Switchover- 42 - 266379/3 As explained hereinabove, all the satellites in the system are preferably synchronized to a common ToD. Their forward links are synchronized at the base-band frame, sub-frame, frame and super-frame levels, and their return links have synchronized slots .

The coverage mapping routine executed at the terminal determines the timing of the satellite switchover. A terminal in a stand-by mode uses this information to switch to the new satellite and then proceeds to demodulate its terminal alert channel.

Forward link traffic to an active terminal that is switching satellites is re-routed by the gateway to the new satellite. The gateway executes the same coverage-mapping algorithm as the terminal and will time the re-routing in advance so that, after propagating through the system, the forward link traffic arrives at the terminal aligned in time with the switchover without experiencing any switchover-related queuing delay .

In order to perform a return link switchover, the terminal sends, ahead of the switchover moment, a special capacity request message that is forwarded by the old (switched-from) satellite to the new (switched-to) satellite. This message is either carried over an Inter-Satellite Link (“ISL”), if one extends between the two satellites, or goes through the gateway(s) serving them. The capacity request specifies the time of switchover, allowing the new satellite to allocate the required capacity accordingly. The terminal will time this request message to allow enough time for an assignment response to arrive back through the old satellite before implementing a switchover. The terminal is then able to switch the return link transmission from the old to the new satellite with only a small hit in throughput.

The terminal re-programs its transmit and receive LO frequency synthesizers during the receive and transmit sub-frames respectively, immediately preceding the switchover, and steers its antenna from the old satellite to the new satellite during the back-end part of the transmit sub-frame immediately preceding switchover. This reduces by a small amount the return link transmit time window within the last frame before the switchover takes place. In addition, any difference in terminal-satellite path delay between the old and the new satellite will cause a shift in the frame, changing the duration of the first transmit window following the switchover.

The coverage-mapping routine preferably provides the carrier-frequency Doppler shift of the new satellite.- 43 - 266379/3 There will be, immediately after switchover, a larger uncertainty in timing of the received forward channel than during beam dwell. A larger search window will therefore be needed for the first sub-frame or (for a terminal being in a stand-by mode) alert channel access. At the same time, assuming the enabling features discussed above, this window will be much shorter than one forward link base-band frame, creating no ambiguity in the PL header to be demodulated .

First-time return link transmissions arrive at the new satellite with a larger timing error than the follow-on traffic (500 nS, for the example parameters given above, or 1% of 50 µS for a relatively short 1024 bit burst at 20 Mbps). To optimize the return link guard interval, so that it is not affected by the constraints of this tiny fraction of traffic, return link capacity assigned through the procedure described above will leave entire slots as guard time intervals and, if needed, the satellite’s return link receiver(s) will be alerted to perform burst acquisition over a larger search window.

Reference is made to Fig. 7A showing a block diagram of a communication terminal 100 (e.g. satellite communication terminal) according to an embodiment of the present invention. The communication terminal 100 is configured and operable for wirelessly communicating, directly or indirectly, with a designated data gate-way station (not specifically shown) for exchanging data therewith view a forward-link communication channel FL, by which data is received by the terminal 100, and a returned-link communication channel RL by which data is transmitted from the terminal 100. In the present non-limiting example, the communication terminal 100 is a satellite communication terminal, which is configured and operable for communicating indirectly with the data gateway, via a communication mediator being presented here for example as a transmission system/satellite 300, such as that described above, furnished on a satellite. Namely in this example the communication terminal 100 is configured and operable for establishing the forward communication channel FL and possibly the return communication channels RL with the communication mediator 300 (which is without loss of generality also referred herein as satellite 300).

In the present example, the communication mediator 300 is configured and operable for making efficient use of its communication resources (data bandwidth/rate).

As indicated above, this may achieved according to some embodiments of the present invention by omitting dummy frames from the communication channel(s) and timely aggregating (bunching) together the data bearing communication frames (which carry - 44 - 266379/3 meaningful data payloads) of one or more of channels which should be transmitted from the communication mediator 300 in a common beam. Accordingly, a certain number of data bearing communication frames pertaining to the channels of the beam are communicated sequentially, with practically no time gaps between them, and thereafter a prolonged recess time is introduced (instead of the dummy frames which are omitted), in which the beam's signal may not be transmitted, and the transmission may direct its resources for transmission of other beams.

In turn, the communication terminal 100 perceives a bursty communication from the communication mediator 300, which includes bursts in which a certain numbers of communication frames are transmitted from the transmission system, and prolonged recess times between them during the terminal may receive no signal from the satellite.

Accordingly, the terminal 100 includes communication receiver 200 which is configured and operable according to the present invention and adapted for efficiently receiving and processing signals received in a burst communication mode from the transmission system, The communication receiver 200 may be configured and operable for example according to any one of the examples illustrated in Fig. 8A discussed below, and is adapted for processing at least a portion of the beam's signal, which is received after the prolonged recess time periods during which the beam may have not being transmitted from the satellite, to determine a carrier frequency of the beam's signal. Preferably according to some embodiments of the present invention the communication receiver 200 is adapted to determine the carrier frequency based on only single communication frame that appears in the portion of the beam's signal which is received after the prolonged recess time period. In some implementations the communication receiver 200 includes a Signal Acquisition module 201 configured and operable for detecting the communication burst, acquiring its signals (namely determine the carrier frequency of the respective beam) and locating the timings of the communication frames therein by processing a single communication frame (typically the first communication frame), and optionally by processing only the header of the single/first communication frame, which appears in the burst. This is achieved for example in the manner described below with reference to any one of Figs. 8A to 8C.

This detection and time location of the first/single communication frames in the timely separated bursts enable the receiver to efficiently process and decode the data encoded - 45 - 266379/3 in the communication frames of the burst while without requiring re-transmission of communication frames.

In some embodiments of the present invention, the communication terminal 100 also includes a scheduling module 130 that is configured and operable for determining the designated time intervals (e.g., the timing and duration) during which communication bursts of the beam's transmission from the satellite may expected to be received by the specific terminal 100 (and/or by other terminals in the same geographical coverage area of the beam). For instance, some of the data previously received by the terminal, may contain transmission/reception plan (e.g. conveyed to from the gateway) and indicative of respective transmission/reception times of different beams (e.g. in a multi-beam/beam-hopping systems), as well as time stamp information, which is an indication of the frame/beam transmission time as measured by a network clock (e.g. located at the gateway with which the satellite may be associated). This information, also known as Network Clock Reference is standardized. Based on this information the scheduling module 130 schedules the reception time intervals during which the receiver 200 should be operated to receive the bursts of the communication beam which is directed to its geographical area by the satellite.

In some embodiments, the scheduling module 130 includes a forward link scheduler module 135 that is configured and operable to utilize the time interval data and assign a forward link schedule for receiving the beam's burst. In some implementations the forward link scheduler module 135 generates operative instructions/signals for activating the communication receiver module 110 of the terminal 100 for receiving the designated burst of the beam during the respective time interval.

In some implementations the forward link scheduler module 135 is configured and operable for generating operative instructions/signals for deactivating the communication receiver 200 of the terminal 100 during one or more time slots at which the forward link is occupied by sub-frames that are designated to other terminals/terminal-groups. This may be for example used for reducing/suppressing noise and/or crosstalk between the received forward link signal and the transmitted return link signals.

Accordingly the communication receiver 200 may be connected to the scheduling module 130 and configured and operable to be responsive to operative - 46 - 266379/3 instructions therefrom for performing signal receipt operation during the forward link schedule. This communication receiver 200 thereby receives and processes the bursts of the beam designated to the terminal 100 and/or it geographical area, at the correct time intervals at which they are transmitted.

Typically the communication receiver 200 may include a receiving channel (not specifically shown in Fig. 7A) configured and operable for applying preprocessing to the analogue signal received from the antenna 105 associated with the terminal. For example the receiving channel may include any one or more of the following modules, which may be implemented as analogue and/or digital modules: signal mixers and/or down-converters (e.g. for applying frequency shift/transform to the signal, such as reducing the signal frequency to the baseband) and/or bandpass filters (e.g. matched filter, for applying bandpass filtration to the received signal) and/or Analogue to Digital converter(s)/samplers (for Sampling the analogue signal from the antenna 105 to convert it to digital form, and/or I/Q signal converters (for processing the received signal to the complex I/Q signal representation form), and/or phased locking loops (PLLs) for maintaining synchronization with the phase of the received signal; and or other modules. In this connection, a person of ordinary skill in the art will readily appreciate how to configure a receiving channel for particular requirements and/or characteristics of the terminal and/or the physical layer parameters of the forward link channel.

The signal receiver 110 may also include a Forward Link Data Adapter 160, adapted for processing the received signal (e.g. after its preprocessing by the receiving channel) and extracting forward link data therefrom. More specifically, the Forward Link Data Adapter 160 may be configured and operable for implementing a certain communication protocol (e.g. DVB-S2 or DVB-S2X) and may be configured and operable for processing the received designated sub-frames, which are designated to the terminal 100, in order to determine, in accordance with such protocol, the header segments and data segments of the designated frames/sub-frames and extract the data therefrom accordingly. A person of ordinary skill in the art will readily appreciate of to implement the Forward Link Data Adapter 160 for a given communication protocol.

Optionally, efficient use of communication resources by the communication mediator 300 is achieved by dividing the forward link communication frame (data frames) transmitted by the mediator/satellite into a plurality of sub-frames. Namely each - 47 - 266379/3 or one or more communication frame in the forward link includes sub-frames that are transmitted in the forward link from the satellite/mediator/gateway 300. In turn, the communication terminal 100 is associated (e.g. registered in or belongs to) a certain group of one or more respective groups of communication terminals. For example a plurality of satellite terminals are divided in several groups). In order to efficiently exploit the forward link bandwidth/rate, each of the designated communication sub­ frames of the complete communication frame is designated to specific one (or more) of the terminal groups. In other words the communication frame includes a certain designated sub-frame (being a respective portion of the full communication frame) which is specifically designated to be received by the terminal 100 (and possibly by additional member terminals of the group to which terminal 100 belongs). Accordingly the full communication frame in the forward link may include a plurality of N communication sub-frames designated to serve respective one or more groups of (satellite) communication terminals.

Accordingly the scheduling module 130 may be configured and operable for determining the time slot (e.g., the timing and duration within the forward link communication frame that is transmitted by the satellite/mediator 300) of the designated communication sub-frame which is designated to be received by the specific terminal 100 (and/or by other members of his terminal group). The Signal Acquisition module 200 detects and locates the start of the reception frame, as described below. This detection and location enables the receiver to process and decode the data. Some of the received data may contain time stamp information, which is an indication of the frame transmission time as measured by the network clock located at the gateway. This information, also known as Network Clock Reference is standardized. Based on this time stamp information the scheduling module 130 schedules the transmission time slot according to the transmission plan conveyed to it by the gateway. In some embodiments, the timeslot of the designated sub-frame is a data parameter (e.g. configuration parameter) that is stored in a configuration memory section of the terminal 100.

In some embodiments the scheduling module 130 includes a forward link scheduler module 135 that is configured and operable for utilizing said time slot data and assign a forward link schedule for receiving the designated communication sub­ frame at said time slot. In some implementations the forward link scheduler module 135 - 48 - 266379/3 generates operative instructions/signals for activating the signal receiver module 110 of the terminal 100 for receiving the designated sub-frame during the respective time slot at which it should be communicated over the forward link communication channel.

In some embodiments the scheduling module 130 also includes a return link scheduler 132 that is configured and operable for assigning a return link schedule for transmitting information to the satellite during time slots other than the time slot of the designated communication sub-frame. For examples the return link scheduler 132 may be configured an operable for generating operative instructions/signals for activating the signal transmitting module 120 of the terminal 100 for transmitting return link data during one or more time slots at which the forward link is occupied by sub-frames that are designated to other terminals/terminal-groups.

Accordingly optionally the terminal 100 includes a signal transmitting module 120 and also optionally a return link data provider module 150 connected to the scheduling module 130 and configured and operable to be responsive to operative instructions therefrom for performing signal transmit operations for transmitting return link data during the return link schedule. The return link data provider module 150 may be configured and operable to prepare and provide the return link data that should be transmitted to the satellite and the signal transmitting module 120, may be configured and operable for encoding the returned link data on a signal to be transmitted (e.g. by properly modulating the signal to be transmitted according to a certain modulation scheme associated with a predetermined data transmission protocol) and thereby generate the transmitted signal that is to be transmitted by the antenna 105. A person of ordinary skill in the art will readily appreciate how to appropriately configure signal transmitting module 120 and/or a return link data provider module 150 for generating transmission signals according to a predetermined protocol.

In some implementations the forward link scheduler module 135 is configured and operable for generating operative instructions/signals for deactivating the signal receiver module 110 of the terminal 100 during one or more time slots at which the forward link is occupied by sub-frames that are designated to other terminals/terminal- groups. Also, additionally or alternatively, in some implementations the return link scheduler module 132 is configured and operable for generating operative instructions/signals for deactivating the signal transmitted module 110 of the terminal 100 during the respective time slot at which it the designated sub-frame is - 49 - 266379/3 communicated over the forward link communication channel. This provides for reducing/suppressing noise and/or crosstalk between the received forward link signal and the transmitted return link signals and therefore improves the signal to noise ratio – thereby enabling improvement in the communication data rate of the system.

Accordingly the terminal 100 may include a signal receiving module 110 connected to the scheduling module 130 and configured and operable to be responsive to operative instructions therefrom for performing signal receipt operation during the forward link schedule(namely during the time slot of the designated sub-frame). This signal receiving module 110 thereby receives and processes the designated sub-frame designated to the terminal 100 at the correct time slot of the communication frame transmitted in the forward link.

Typically the signal receiver 110 may include a receiving channel (not specifically shown in Fig. 7A) configured and operable for applying preprocessing to the analogue signal received from the antenna 105 associated with the terminal. For example the receiving channel may include any one or more of the following modules, which may be implemented as analogue and/or digital modules: signal mixers and/or down-converters (e.g. for applying frequency shift/transform to the signal, such as reducing the signal frequency to the baseband) and/or bandpath filters (e.g. matched filter, for applying bandpass filtration to the received signal) and/or Analogue to Digital converter(s)/samplers (for Sampling the analogue signal from the antenna 105 to convert it to digital form, and/or I/Q signal converters (for processing the received signal to the complex I/Q signal representation form), and/or phased locking loops (PLLs) for maintaining synchronization with the phase of the received signal; and or other modules. In this connection, a person of ordinary skill in the art will readily appreciate how to configured and receiving channel for particular requirements and/or characteristics of the terminal and/or the physical layer parameters of the forward link channel.

The signal receiver 110 may also include a Forward Link Data Adapter 160, adapted for receiving the received signal (e.g. after its preprocessing by the receiving channel) and extracting forward link data therefrom. More specifically, the Forward Link Data Adapter 160 may be configured and operable for implementing a certain communication protocol (e.g. DVB-S2 or DVB-S2X) and may be configured and operable for processing the received designated sub-frames, which are designated to the - 50 - 266379/3 terminal 100, in order to determine, in accordance with such protocol, the header segments and data segments of the designated sub-frames and extract the data therefrom accordingly. A person of ordinary skill in the art will readily appreciate of to implement the Forward Link Data Adapter 160 for a given communication protocol.

Reference is made to Fig. 7B which is diagram schematically illustrating in self- explanatory manner three possible frame structures of the DVB-S2X standard/protocol.

In this example three frame types are illustrated: A regular frame, a very low signal-to- noise ratio noise frame (referred to as VL-SNR frame), and super frame. The code words (e.g. unique words referenced UW in Figs. 8B and 8C below) used in the frames may include as follows: - A start of frame (SOF) which is a 26 symbols sequence.

- A complete header, 90 to 180 symbols which contain an encoding of some frame information. If this information is pre-configured or otherwise know to the receiver, it may serve as a UW.

- A VL-SNR frame of the DVB-S2X protocol may include code word (UW) in the form of a VL-SNR header which contains 900 symbols (there could be different sequences of this code word).

- A super frame of the DVB-S2X protocol may include SOSF (Start Of Super­ Frame) code word (UW) in which contains 270 symbols (there could be different sequences of this code word).

Turning back to Fig. 7A, optionally, in some embodiments the communication terminal is further configured and operable for establishing the return communication channel RL with the communication mediator (satellite transmission system) 300 for transmitting data back to the satellite. To this end, optionally in such embodiments the terminal 100 further includes a signal transmitting module 120 and a data provider module 150 configured and operable for transmitting return link data during the return link schedule. The data provider module 150 may be configured and operable to prepare and provide the return link data that should be transmitted to the satellite and the signal transmitting module 120, may be configured and operable for encoding the returned link data on a signal to be transmitted by the antenna 105 (e.g. by properly modulating the signal to be transmitted according to a certain modulation scheme associated with a predetermined data transmission protocol) and thereby generate the transmitted signal that is to be transmitted by the antenna.- 51 - 266379/3 As indicated above, in some implementations of the present invention the scheduler module 130 is configured and operable for activating the communication receiver 200 at time intervals at which the designated communication bursts from the satellite's beam should be received by the terminal and possibly deactivating the receiver module 100 at other time slots (e.g. for instance in order to reduce cross-talk between the receipt/transmit channels and/or reduce other noises and/or save energy).

To this end, in some implementations the terminal 100 is configured such that the signal transmitting module 120 and the signal receiving module 110 thereof are configured for operating at mutually exclusive time slots for transmitting and receiving the respective return and forward link signals.

It should be noted that in various cases/implementations of the terminal system 100 above, the communication receiver 200 may lose (dis-acquire) the signal of the beam from the transmission system 100, in the senses that it losses synchronization/locking with the carrier frequency of the signal. For instance, optionally, in some embodiments the carrier frequency locking module(s) of the signal receiving module 110 is/are not activated during return link schedule, thereby allowing a carrier frequency of said forward link to drift out of tune. Also, signal loss may occur for example in cases where the beam to be received by the terminal 100 is communicated in bursty communication mode (with recess times between the burst), and/or in cases where the communication receiver 200 is deactivated at certain time recesses. To this end, signal loss may occur in implementations of the system, in which the receiver does not receive the signal for relatively long periods of time (e.g. due to sleep/deactivated periods of the receiver and/or beam hopping scenarios when the satellite transmits its energy to different areas (cells) at different times). In these cases the carrier frequency locking module(s) of the signal receiving module 200 (e.g. such as a phase lock loop, and/or other frequency tracking mechanisms implemented digitally), is/are not functionally capable/operable/activated for locking on to the signal's carrier, thereby allowing the carrier frequency to drift out of tune. Accordingly, in cases the forward link signal drifts significantly, and/or in case the synchronization signal (clock signal) of the receiver 110, drifts, upon activation of the receiver it might not immediately lock/find the forwards link signal. This is because such a drift may cause a discrepancy between the carrier frequency at to which the receiver is tuned and the actual carrier frequency over which data is encoded on the forward link signal.- 52 - 266379/3 Indeed, this may be overcome by applying sequential carrier frequency scanning immediately after activation the receiver 110, by sequentially tuning the receiver to different carrier frequencies in an attempt to identify the correct carrier frequency about which the forward link signal data is encoded. However, such sequential carrier frequency scanning is time consuming operation (particularly in cases where the communication frames carry large data payloads – since it the duration of a complete communication frame is required at each such scanning step in order to identify the header of the frame). For example conventional communication receiver may not be able to immediately lock/find the forwards link signal. This is because such a drift may cause a discrepancy between the carrier frequency to which the receiver is tuned and the actual carrier frequency over which data is encoded on the forward link signal.

Therefore, according to some embodiments of the present invention the communication terminal 100 (e.g. the signal receiving module 110 thereof) includes a novel communication receiver 200 including a signal acquisition system 201, which is configured and operable for processing time frame of the received (forward link) signal (signal burst) to simultaneously, at the same time/processing-stage/step, determine the carrier frequency of the signal burst out of a plurality of possible carrier frequencies.

The processed time frame portion of the signal/burst may be a portion of the signal extending not more than one communication frame, or not more than a header of such communication frame, and including one or more predetermined code words expected in the header. The signal acquisition system 201 is configured and operable to simultaneously determine (e.g. in parallel) whether the code words in the processed time frame are encoded over any one of a plurality of possible carrier frequencies (to which the received signal may have drifted relative to the receiver's reference carrier frequency). Accordingly, the novel communication receiver 200 (signal acquisition system 201) of the present invention enables simultaneous locking on the carrier frequency of the forward link signal and therefore facilitates fast acquisition of the signal.

Thus in terminal 100, the signal acquisition system 201 is configured for operating upon activation of the receiver for process at least a part of the communication frame received in the forward link (e.g. from the satellite/mediator 300) to lock on to the forward link signal (e.g. on to the exact frequency thereof). This allows to immediately (with no delays) identify at least one code word in the received signal - 53 - 266379/3 designating whether the received signals encompasses a designated sub-frame of interest, and determine a time index (sample position) at which said code word is encoded in the received signal (namely determining the initial/reference time/sample of the sub-frame of interest in the received signal and the carrier frequency over which data (e.g. code word) is encoded in the received signal.

Accordingly, as discussed above, in some implementations the communication terminal 100 of the present invention can implement an efficient beam hopping technology Relying inter-alia on the ability of the communication receiver 200 of the present invention to efficiently locking on the carrier frequencies of unknown/newly received signals in real time (namely within one/first communication frame). This allows the satellite's transmission system 300 beam to hop from one group of terminal to the other, and cause discontinuity in the forward link of each terminal, while without the cost of time consuming signal acquisition (carrier frequency locking) at the times of reestablishment of the forward link signals to a particular terminal.

In this connection, in some implementations the scheduling module 130 is further configured and operable for generating a request for allocation of return link capacity in another beam or a different satellite, thereby when a terminal switches a beam or a satellite, it is able to immediately utilize the allocated capacity over the new (switched-to) beam or at the new satellite.

Turning now together to Figs. 8A to 8C, there are illustrated in block diagrams several examples of signal acquisition system 201 which may be included in the communication receiver 200 according to various embodiments of the present invention.

The signal acquisition system 201 according to certain embodiments of the present invention includes: - an input module 210 configured and operable to obtain a received signal (e.g. electro-magnetic (EM), typically radio frequency (RF), signal) which encodes communicated data over a certain carrier frequency; - a signal time frame processor 220 that is connected to the input module and configured and operable for continuous processing (e.g. in real time) of time frame portions of the received signal to identify at least one code word of a group of one or more predetermined code words, being encoded in a time frame portion of the received signal; and- 54 - 266379/3 - an output module configured and operable for outputting identification data indicative of identification of said code word in the signal.

The acquisition engine/system 201 is a part of the receiver 110, the purpose of which is to acquire the received signal, namely detect the existence of a received signal and synchronize to the basic frame structure. The receiver might to acquire the received signal in two, rather different circumstances: • Cold start, wherein the terminal needs to acquire the satellite signal without any prior information. Synchronization procedures mainly include carrier frequency correction, sampling timing correction, frame synchronization, equalization and fine phase correction.

• Signal loss, wherein the signal is lost for a short period. In this case, most of the parameters are available, and after reception is resumed, full acquisition can be readily achieved.

It can be quite safely assumed that the burst receiving conditions are more of the signal loss type rather than cold start, but, depending on the off-time interval, oscillator’s drift and instability and dynamic changes may require that the receiver performs re-acquisition.

The acquisition engine/system 201 is designed to achieve recovery from a signal loss within a single transmission frame. Possible applications may include: operation as a terminal receiver in a Frame by frame beam-hopping environment, and operation when dummy frames are omitted hence the resulting transmission is discontinuous.

In some cases, particularly after long durations in which the receiver is not locked to the signals which is to be received, the actually carrier frequency of the signal to be received may be unknown at the receiver end (e.g. due to frequency drift) and may actually reside anywhere within a certain, e.g. predetermined, frequency band in which frequency shift due to drifting can occur. To this end the actual carrier frequency can at any one of a plurality of possible carrier frequencies within this frequency band.

Therefore, according to some embodiments of the present invention the signal time frame processor 220 is adapted to overcome this problem of the carrier frequency drifting, and configured and operable for applying real time processing of the received signal to identify in real time the whether any one or more code words are encoded in the received signal over any of the possible one or more carrier frequencies.- 55 - 266379/3 To this end, in some embodiment, the signal time frame processor 220 includes a carrier frequency analyzer module 230 configured and operable for analyzing a time frame portion (or one or more time frame portions) of the received signal in conjunction, simultaneously, with the plurality of possible carrier frequencies of the received signal. More specifically the carrier frequency analyzer module 230 is configured and operable for transforming the time frame portion of the received signal to generate (simultaneously) carrier-data which includes a plurality of carrier-data- pieces associated with each possible carrier frequency of the plurality of possible carrier frequencies of the received signal, respectively. The transform is carried out such that each of the carrier-data pieces is indicative of data decoded from the processed time frame portion by assuming one of the possible carrier frequencies of the received signal.

In other words, each carrier-data piece is indicative of a "pseudo" data (meaningful or not) encoded in the time frame portion over certain assumed one of the possible carrier frequencies associated with said carrier-data piece.

For instance, as will be described in more details below, in the embodiments of Fig. 8B, the carrier frequency analyzer module 230 includes an array of signal frequency transformers, (e.g. implemented as digital or analogue signal mixers and/or frequency-shifters) Δf1 … Δfn which are configured and operable for applying difference respective frequency shifts Δf1- Δfn to the time frame portion of the received signal thereby respectively generate n carrier-data pieces associated with differently frequency shifts of the received signal. Even more specifically, these simultaneously generated carrier-data pieces are actually frequency shifted replicas of the processed time frame portion of the received signal having their carrier frequencies shifted by the different predetermined frequency shifts Δf1- Δfn respectively relative to the certain undetermined/unknown carrier frequency of the received signal. Accordingly in this case each carrier-data piece is indicative of a "pseudo" data (meaningful or not) encoded in the time frame portion over certain assumed one of the possible carrier frequencies associated with said carrier-data piece.

In another example of Fig. 8C, the carrier frequency analyzer module 230 includes a time to frequency transformation module, which transforms the convolution results of the time frame portion of the received signal with a certain code word which might have being encoded in the signal, and transforms these convolution results from the time domain to the frequency domain. The time to frequency transformation may be - 56 - 266379/3 implemented for example using Fourier transform (e.g. Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) and/or Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT)) and/or via any suitable time-frequency transform. Accordingly, a result of the transform is generally a series of bins in the frequency domain. In this case, (transforming the convolved time frame portion of the signal with the code word), the bins actually present carrier-data pieces whereby the intensity (magnitude) of each bin number is indicative of whether the specific code word used in the convolution is encoded in the time frame portion of the signal under the assumption of a certain one of the possible carrier frequencies (or in other words under the assumption that the received signal is shifted by one of the frequency shifts Δf1- Δfn associated with the particular bin. To this end, the bins together present a plurality of carrier-data pieces indicative of the plurality of possible frequency shifts of the carrier frequency of the received signal.

In some embodiment, the signal time frame processor 220 also includes a convolution module 240 configured and operable for processing the time frame portion of the signal to simultaneously identify whether the time frame portion encodes the at least one code word, over any one of the a plurality of possible carrier frequencies simultaneously.

In this connection, as shown for example in the embodiment of Fig. 8B, the convolution module 240 includes a plurality of at least n correlator modules connected to the plurality of n signal mixers (frequency-transformers/shifter; e.g. to their output) and respectively configured and operable for simultaneously convolving the n plurality of n carrier-data pieces (e.g. which are in this case constituted by respectively differently frequency shifted signal portions) with a certain code word (or possibly with a plurality of m code words). Accordingly in this case the n correlator modules of convolution module 240 in Fig. 8B generate simultaneously n convolved signal representations whereby each convolved signal representation is indicative of whether the convolved code word is encoded in the time frame portion of the signal with a certain corresponding one of the carrier frequency shifts Δf1- Δfn.

In another embodiment, that illustrated in Fig. 8C, the wherein the convolution module 240 precedes the frequency analyzer module 230 with reference to the direction of the signal processing flow by the system. In this case the convolution module 240 is a word convolution module which is adapted to convolve (during a first and optionally only convolution stage) k(1)= n successive (typically equal sized) segments of the time­- 57 - 266379/3 frame portion of the signal, with corresponding successive symbols/constituents of the code word (e.g. each symbol may be constituted by one or more bits of the code word).

This yields an order series of n respective symbol-convolved signal representations (which correspond to timely ordered segments in the received signal), whereby each symbol-convolved signal representation indicates of whether a respective symbol/constituent is encoded in the time-frame portion. Then, by implementing the time-to-frequency transformation of the order series of n respective symbol-convolved representations, a frequency representation of the code word convolution with the time frame portion of the received signal is obtained. The frequency representation actually presents carrier data and includes a plurality of bins presenting carrier data portions indicating whether the code word and at which carrier frequency the code word is encoded in the time frame portion of the received signal. More specifically, the intensity of each bin numbers indicates whether the code word is actually encoded in the time frame portion of the received signal and a particular carrier frequency associated with the location of the bin in the frequency representation. In other words by comparing the bins with certain threshold, and detecting a bin exceeding the threshold, the carrier frequency of the received signal can be determined from the bin location in the frequency representation and the code word is identified as encoded over that carrier frequency in the respective time frame portion of the received signal.

To this end, the time frame processor 220 is adapted to determine a time index of code word in the received signal, based on the time frame portion of the received signal at which the code word is identified. Accordingly the output module may be further adapted to output this time index data, as this time index data actually designates/indicate a reference/initial location of a communicating data frame communicated over the received/forward link signal.

Also, the time frame processor 220 is adapted to process carrier data to identify the carrier-data piece which encodes significant data and thereby determines the carrier frequency of the received signal. The output module 250 is further adapted to output said determined carrier frequency.

Referring specifically to Fig. 8B, as indicated above, in this embodiment, the carrier frequency analyzer module 230 of the signal acquisition system includes a plurality of n signal mixers/shifters (transformers) Af1-Afn configured an operable for simultaneously processing the received signal. To this end, the signal mixers are - 58 - 266379/3 adapted to apply a plurality of n respectively different predetermined frequency shifts to the received signals and thereby generate a plurality of n respectively different frequency shifted signals having their carrier frequencies shifted by said different predetermined frequency shifts relative to the certain undetermined carrier frequency of the received signal. The convolution module 240 includes a plurality of at least n correlator modules connected to the plurality of n signal mixers Af1-Afn respectively and configured and operable for simultaneously convolving the plurality of frequency shifted signals respectively with the code word, to thereby concurrently generate n convolved signal representations indicative of whether the code words is encoded in said the corresponding frequency shifted signals.

Fig. 8B depicts, in a self-explanatory manner, the operational principles of the signal acquisition system 201. It relies on a priori known information (UW – Unique/code Word) transmitted by the transmitter within the transmitter frame. The received signal at the output of the optionally provided matched filter of the receiving path is frequency shifted and then correlated with several possible unique/code words UW. In some examples, the output/comparator module 250 is used to determine the start of frame based on the convolved signal representations (representing the correlations with the frequency shifts). To this end, the maximal absolute value of the correlation among all possible frequency shifts is tested and compared to a threshold value, and the timing when this threshold is passed determines the start of frame (time index).

According to some embodiment, the convolution module 240 includes a plurality of at least nXm correlator modules, for simultaneously testing whether any one of number m (integer) of code words UW is encoded in the received signal (in the time frame portion thereof). To this end, each group of m correlator modules is connected to a respective one signal mixer of the n signal mixers Af1-Afn and configured for simultaneously convolving a respective frequency shifted signal obtained by the respective one signal mixer with up to m code words simultaneously. The convolution module thus generates up to nXm convolved signal representations indicative of whether any one of the m code words is encoded in any one of the n frequency shifted signals respectively.

Accordingly in such embodiments the output module may include a code word identification module adapted for comparing nXm convolved signal representations with - 59 - 266379/3 predetermined criteria and thereby to determine whether any code word is encoded in the frequency shifted signal corresponding to the convolved signal representation.

Turning now to Fig. 8C, the construction and operation of the signal acquisition system 201 are more specifically described. In this example, the convolution module 240 is implemented as a word convolution module and includes a plurality of k(1)= n delay modules D configured and operable for applying k(1) different time delays to the received signal and thereby generate k(1) respective time delayed signals which are copies of the received signal (time frame portion thereof) delayed by the k(1) respective time delays. The convolution module 240 also includes at least a first word convolution stage S(1) which includes: a code word provision module, which is not specifically shown and can be implanted digitally as a shift registers connected to a memory storing the predetermined code word UW, and which is adapted to provide k(1) data portions h0 to hn-1 indicative of n symbol constituents of the code word (k(1)=n). The first word convolution stage S(1) further includes a plurality of k(1) symbol convolution modules (e.g. signal multipliers). Each symbol convolution module is connected to a respective delay module of the plurality of delay modules, for receiving therefrom a corresponding time delayed signal, which is generated thereby, and is connected to the code word provision module (shift register) for receiving corresponding symbol/constituent hi of the k(1) symbol constituents whose location in the code word UW corresponds to the respective time delay of the time delayed signal of the respective delay module D. Also, each symbol convolution module is configured and operable for convolving the time delayed signal with the corresponding symbol/constituent to generate a respective symbol-convolved signal representations indicative of whether said symbol constituent is encoded in the corresponding time delayed signal. Thus, the k(1) symbol convolution modules generate k(1) symbol-convolved signal representations indicative of whether the k(1) symbol constituents of the code word are encoded in a timely order in the received signal. To this end, the first stage S(1) yields n symbol-convolved signal representations.

The signal acquisition system 201 also includes the carrier frequency analyzer module 230 including a time to frequency transformation module (e.g. FFT or DFT) adapted for receiving the k(1) symbol-convolved signal representations from the code word convolution module 240 and applying time to frequency transformation thereto to obtain a frequency based representation of the n symbol-convolved signal representations.- 60 - 266379/3 In mathematical terms, the operation can be described as follows: Denote the input signal (complex I/Q) as s where n is the symbol number, where, without loss of generality, we can take n=0 as the first symbol in a frame (time frame portion).

For the code word UW sequence, the input signal can be described as: sn+n = hne 71f%(n+n0)Ts, n=0,...,N-1 where hn is the known symbol value of the UW, N is the number of symbols within the UW. f% is the frequency error (in Hz) between the received signal and the receiver oscillator. T is the symbol time (1/Symbol rate) in seconds, n0 is the actual delay of the received signal.

The operation performed by the acquisition module is then: - p-j27mTSAfk mTs (4fk - f) maxmax > ؛ א = max max T h^h״״״, e־j7 ־ [n0,ko sm-ne m m-n+n0 ] = Th h m nk nk m=0 (1) Namely the input signal is corrected by a frequency shift 4 f and then correlated with the UW. If the frequency 4 f shift equals that of the actual error, the result is the actual correlation between the received signal and the UW, which will peak at n0.

In a specific example of the implementation, if we take k 4f= k NT Eq. (1) can be written as: f N-I - j 27mTsA- 1 N-I - j 27fmk- f [n,k] = max max < T h*msm_ne NTs א = max max T hLhm_n+n e IN J 0 , o m m-n m m-n+n nk nk 0 I m=0 I m=0 which is the FFT operation, performed over the terms h* s .

The actual implementation is exemplified in Fig. 8C, in which the correlation to a given UW (of which the symbols are described as hi) is performed first, and the hypotheses of the possible frequencies of the carrier signal are tested via DFT / FFT.

According to some embodiment, the signal acquisition system 201 is configured to be scalable to complexity. This can be achieved by configuring the word convolution module 240 with a cascade of convolution stage including the first convolution stage - 61 - 266379/3 S(1) described above and one or more cascaded additional convolution stages S(2) to (L) where each of the additional convolution stages l, S(l), is adapted for receiving the k(l-1) symbol-convolved signal representations from the preceding convolution stage S(l-1) and aggregating (adding, summing) them to generate a set having a lower number of k(L) = k(L-1)/N symbol-convolved signal representation pertaining to larger symbols of the code word. Also, in this embodiment, a selector module 245 is optionally used which is configured to selectively operate the time to frequency transformation module FFT based on the symbol-convolved signal representations obtained from a selected stage l of the set of stages. Accordingly, the frequency transformation module FFT transforms solely the k(1) symbol-convolved of the selected one of the convolution stages thereby enabling controllable adjustment of processing power requirements and accuracy of identification of the code word in the received signal.

Hence, for a high symbol rate, for which a given offset is translated into a small error relative to the symbol rate (and thus lower frequency resolution is required), averaging is performed over a large number of coefficients and the size (number of bins) of the FFT is smaller. This enables faster calculation. On the other hand, for lower symbol rates, where resources are available, full FFT can be performed, with high resolution.

In this regards, it should be understood that a peak in the frequency based representation (the output of the FFT/DFT) satisfying a predetermined criteria (threshold) indicates that the code word UW is encoded in the received signal. The location of the peak in the frequency based representation indicates a shift of the carrier frequency of the received signal; and the intensity (absolute magnitude) of this peak indicates significance level of the code word being encoded in the received signal (in the processed time frame portion thereof).

Therefore, in some embodiment, the output module comprises a code word identification module may include a comparison module adapted for comparing said the peak intensity with a predetermined criteria and thereby determine whether the code word is encoded in the received signal.

In some embodiments the signal acquisition system 201 is configured an operable for concurrently determining whether any one of a plurality of m>1 different code-words is encoded in the received signal. In such embodiments the signal acquisition system 201 may for example include a plurality of at least m word - 62 - 266379/3 convolution modules 240 similar to those described above, or additional one or more time frame signal processors 220’ for processing different respective code words.

The signal acquisition system 201 configured as in any of the above described examples of Figs. 7A and 8A-8C, may be configured as a digital signal processing chip (system on chip) or part of a system on a chip. The input module may be associated with signal receiving channel for connecting to an antenna module and including at least an analogue to digital converter adapted to sample an analogue signal from the antenna module and generate the received signal in digital form. The input module may be adapted to extract the time frames portions from the received signal as successive time frame portions of predetermined length successively shifted from one another by at least one signal sample.

The signal acquisition system as described above may be configured and operable to process the received signal to identify the at least one code word encoded in the signal and determine a time index (sample position) and whether the code word is encoded in the received signal and a carrier frequency over which the code word is encoded in the received signal.

The signal acquisition system 201 and/or the entire communication receiver 200 described above can be implemented in the chip as H/W accelerator for the DSP, e.g. on the same chip of the DSP.

According to the above-described technique, time synchronization may be performed in a hierarchal manner. This may, for example, be implemented as follows: The signal, a communication frame thereof, is generally composed as a sequence of symbols. Considering for example the case of DVB-S2X, a symbol time can vary between 2nsec (500Msymbols per second) to 1 microsec (1M sps). Symbols are ordered in communication frames. In DVB-S2X frames are between 3000 to 35000 symbols, which translates to 6 microsec to 35msec. Frames can be organized as superframes containing about 600000 symbols. A superframe size may then be between 1.2msec to 600msec. Frames or superframe transmission times are therefore an integer multiple of the above. The acquisition engine/system 200 described above provides synchronization at a frame level. Symbol level synchronization can be performed at the modem itself using known algorithms (Gardner). Standardized methods (GPS, IEEE- 63 - 266379/3 1588 and Network Clock Reference (NCR) provide means to synchronize transmission times.

In the description and claims of the present application, each of the verbs, "comprise" "include" and "have", and conjugates thereof, are used to indicate that the object or objects of the verb are not necessarily a complete listing of members, components, elements or parts of the subject or subjects of the verb.

The present invention has been described using detailed descriptions of embodiments thereof that are provided by way of example and are not intended to limit the scope of the invention in any way. The described embodiments comprise different features, not all of which are required in all embodiments of the invention. Some embodiments of the present invention utilize only some of the features or possible combinations of the features. Variations of embodiments of the present invention that are described and embodiments of the present invention comprising different combinations of features noted in the described embodiments will occur to persons of the art. The scope of the invention is limited only by the following claims.

Claims (37)

CLAIMS:

1. A signal acquisition system comprising: an input module adapted to obtain a received signal which is an electromagnetic (EM) signal encoding communicated data over an unknown carrier frequency, being 5 any one of a plurality of possible carrier frequencies residing within a predetermined frequency band; a signal time frame processor connected to the input module and configured and operable for continuous processing of time frame portions of the received signal to identify at least one code word of a group of one or more predetermined code words, 10 being encoded in a time frame portion of the received signal; said signal time frame processor comprises: a. a carrier frequency analyzer module configured and operable for analyzing said a time frame portion of the received signal in conjunction with said plurality of possible carrier frequencies simultaneously, by transforming said time frame 15 portion to generate carrier-data including a plurality of carrier-data-pieces associated with each possible carrier frequency of said plurality of possible carrier frequencies respectively; whereby said transforming of said time frame portion is carried out such that each carrier-data piece of said carrier-data pieces is indicative of pseudo data, meaningful or not, which is decodable from said 20 time frame portion by assuming one of the possible carrier frequencies; and b. a convolution module configured and operable for processing the time frame portion of the signal to simultaneously identify whether said time frame portion encodes said at least one code word, over any one of said a plurality of possible carrier frequencies; and 25 an output module configured and operable for outputting identification data indicative of identification of said code word in said signal.

2. The signal acquisition system of claim 1 wherein said time frame processor is adapted to determine a time index of said code word in the received signal based on said 30 time frame portion of the received signal at which said code word is identified; and wherein said output module is further adapted to output said time index.- 65 - 266379/4

3. The signal acquisition system of claim 1 or 2 wherein said time frame processor is adapted to process said carrier data to identify the carrier-data piece which encodes meaningful data and thereby determine said carrier frequency of the received signal; and wherein said output module is further adapted to output said determined carrier 5 frequency.

4. The signal acquisition system of any one of claims 1 to 3 wherein said carrier frequency analyzer module comprises a plurality of n signal mixers configured an operable for processing the received signal simultaneously whereby said plurality of 10 signal mixers are adapted to apply a plurality of n respectively different predetermined frequency shifts to the received signals and thereby generate a plurality of n respectively different frequency shifted signals having their carrier frequencies shifted respectively by said different predetermined frequency shifts relative to said unknown carrier frequency of the received signal; 15

5. The signal acquisition system of claim 4 wherein said plurality of signal mixers are operable for applying said respectively different frequency shifts such that the shifted carrier frequencies of said plurality of frequency shifted signals span a range of said predetermined frequency band. 20

6. The signal acquisition system of claim 4 or 5 wherein said convolution module comprises a plurality of at least n correlator modules connected to said plurality of n signal mixers respectively and configured and operable for simultaneously convolving said plurality of frequency shifted signals respectively with said code word, to thereby 25 generate a n convolved signal representations indicative of whether said code words is encoded in said frequency shifted signals respectively.

7. The signal acquisition system of claim 6 wherein said convolution module comprises a plurality of at least nXm correlator modules, whereby m being an integer 30 number greater than one; and wherein each group of m correlator modules of said nXm correlator modules is connected to a respective one signal mixer of said plurality of n signal mixers and is configured for simultaneously convolving a respective frequency shifted signal obtained by said respective one signal mixer with up to m code word; said - 66 - 266379/4 convolution module thereby generates up to nXm convolved signal representations indicative of whether any one of said m code words is encoded in any one of said n frequency shifted signals respectively. 5

8. The signal acquisition system of claim 6 or 7 wherein said output module comprises a code word identification module comprising a comparison module adapted for comparing at least one convolved signal representation of said n convolved signal representations with a predetermined criteria and thereby to determine whether said code word is encoded in the frequency shifted signal corresponding to said convolved 10 signal representation.

9. The signal acquisition system of any one of claims 1 to 3 wherein said convolution module comprises a word convolution module comprising: a. a plurality of k(1)= n delay modules configured and operable for applying k(1) 15 different time delays to the received signal and thereby generate k(1) respective time delayed signals being copies of said received signal delayed by said k(1) respective time delays; and b. at least a first word convolution stage S(1) comprising: i. a code word provision module adapted to provide k(1) data portions 20 indicative of n symbol constituents of said code word; and ii. a plurality of k(1) symbol convolution modules; whereby each symbol convolution module of said plurality of k(1) symbol convolution modules is connected for receiving from a respective delay module of said plurality of delay modules, a corresponding time delayed signal, which is 25 generated thereby, and is connected for receiving from said code word provision module, a corresponding symbol constituent of said k(1) symbol constituents which location in said code words corresponds to the respective time delay of the time delayed signal of the respective delay module, and configured and operable for convolving said time delayed 30 signal with said corresponding symbol constituent to generate a respective symbol-convolved signal representations indicative of whether said symbol constituent is encoded in the corresponding time delayed signal; said k(1) symbol convolution modules thereby generate k(1) symbol- - 67 - 266379/4 convolved signal representations indicative of whether said k(1) symbol constituents of the code word are encoded in a timely order in said received signal. 5 10. The signal acquisition system of claim 9 wherein said carrier frequency analyzer module comprises a time to frequency transformation module adapted for receiving said k(1) symbol-convolved signal representations from said code word convolution module and configured and operable for applying time to frequency transformation to said k(1) symbol-convolved signal representations to obtain a frequency based representation of

10. Said n-symbol-convolved signal representations.

11. The signal acquisition system of claim 10 wherein said time to frequency transformation is a Fourier transform. 15

12. The signal acquisition system of claim 11 wherein said time to frequency transformation is applied utilizing at least one of FFT and DFT.

13. The signal acquisition system of any one of claims 10 to 12 wherein: - a peak in said frequency based representation satisfying a predetermined 20 criteria indicates said code word being encoded in the received signal; - A frequency index of said peak in said frequency based representation indicates a shift of the carrier frequency of said received signal; and - an intensity of said peak indicates significance level of said code word being encoded in the received signal. 25

14. The signal acquisition system of any one of claims 9 to 13 wherein said word convolution module comprises a convolution stage cascade comprising said first convolution stage S(1) and one or more cascaded additional convolution stages S(2) to (L) each of the additional convolution stages S(L) being configured and operable for 30 receiving the k(L-1) symbol-convolved signal representations from convolution stage S(L- 1) preceding and aggregating the symbol-convolved signal representations to generate a set having a lower number of k(L) = k(L-1)/N symbol-convolved signal representation pertaining to larger symbols of the code word; and- 68 - 266379/4 a selector module configured and operable for selectively operating said time to frequency transformation module based on the symbol-convolved signal representations obtained from a selected stage of the set of adapted for receiving said k(1) symbol- convolved a selected one of the convolution stages thereby enabling controllable 5 adjustment of processing power requirements and accuracy of identification of said code word in the received signal.

15. The signal acquisition system of claim 13 or 14 wherein said output module comprises a code word identification module comprising a comparison module adapted 10 for comparing said intensity of said peak indicates with a predetermined criteria and thereby to determine whether said code word is encoded in the received signal.

16. The signal acquisition system of any one of claims 9 to 15 comprising a plurality of at least m>1 word convolution modules associated with different respective code 15 words and configured and operable for simultaneously determining whether said received signal encodes any one of said m code words.

17. The signal acquisition system of any one of claims 1 to 16 being configured as a digital signal processing chip; 20

18. The signal acquisition system of claim 17 wherein said input module is associated with signal receiving channel connected to an antenna module and comprising at least an analogue to digital converter adapted to sample an analogue signal from said antenna module and generate said received signal in digital form; and 25 wherein said input module is adapted to extract said time frames portions as from the received signal as successive time frame portions of predetermined length successively shifted from one another by at least one signal sample.

19. The signal acquisition system of any one of the claims 1 to 18 being configured 30 and operable to process the received signal to identify said at least one code word encoded in the signal and determine a time index (sample position) and which said code word is encoded in the received signal and a carrier frequency over which said code word is encoded in the received signal.- 69 - 266379/4

20. A communication receiver adapted for processing signals of a burst mode communication channel from a remote communication system, wherein the 5 communication receiver is configured and operable for processing at least a portion of a signal received in said communication channel after a recess time period during which communication frames were not transmitted in said communication channel to determine a carrier frequency of said communication channel; wherein said carrier frequency is determined based on a single communication frame, which appears in the 10 communication channel after said recess time period.

21. The communication receiver of claim 20 configured and operable for identifying at least one code word in said communication frame and determine a time index at which said code word is encoded in the received signal and a carrier frequency over 15 which said code word is encoded in the received signal.

22. The communication receiver of claim 20 or 21 comprising an input module adapted to receive said signal whereby said signal encodes communicated data over an unknown carrier frequency, being any one of a plurality of possible carrier frequencies 20 residing within a predetermined frequency band.

23. The communication receiver of any one of claims 20 to 22 comprising the signal acquisition system according to any one of claims 1 to 19. 25

24. The communication receiver of any one of claims 20 to 23 comprising a signal time frame processor connected to the input module and configured and operable for continuous processing of time frame portions of the received signal to identify at least one code word of a group of one or more predetermined code words, being encoded in a time frame portion of the received signal; said signal time frame processor comprises: 30 c. a carrier frequency analyzer module configured and operable for analyzing said a time frame portion of the received signal in conjunction with said plurality of possible carrier frequencies simultaneously, by transforming said time frame portion to generate carrier-data including a plurality of carrier-data-pieces - 70 - 266379/4 associated with each possible carrier frequency of said plurality of possible carrier frequencies respectively, whereby each of said carrier-data piece being indicative of data encoded in said time frame portion over a carrier frequency associated with said carrier-data piece; and 5 d. a convolution module configured and operable for processing the time frame portion of the signal to simultaneously identify whether said time frame portion encodes said at least one code word, over any one of said a plurality of possible carrier frequencies; said time frame processor is adapted to determine a time index of said code word in 10 the received signal based on said time frame portion of the received signal at which said code word is identified; and wherein said output module is further adapted to output said time index.

25. The communication receiver of claim 24 wherein said carrier frequency analyzer 15 module comprises a plurality of n signal mixers configured an operable for processing the received signal simultaneously whereby said plurality of signal mixers are adapted to apply a plurality of n respectively different predetermined frequency shifts to the received signals and thereby generate a plurality of n respectively different frequency shifted signals having their carrier frequencies shifted respectively by said different 20 predetermined frequency shifts relative to said unknown carrier frequency of the received signal;

26. The communication receiver of claim 25 wherein said convolution module comprises a plurality of at least n correlator modules connected to said plurality of n 25 signal mixers respectively and configured and operable for simultaneously convolving said plurality of frequency shifted signals respectively with said code word, to thereby generate a n convolved signal representations indicative of whether said code words is encoded in said frequency shifted signals respectively. 30

27. The communication receiver of claim 26 wherein said convolution module comprises a plurality of at least nXm correlator modules, whereby m being an integer number greater than one; and wherein each group of m correlator modules of said nXm correlator modules is connected to a respective one signal mixer of said plurality of n - 71 - 266379/4 signal mixers and configured for simultaneously convolving a respective frequency shifted signal obtained by said respective one signal mixer with up to m code word simultaneously; said convolution module thereby generates up to nXm convolved signal representations indicative of whether any one of said m code words is encoded in any 5 one of said n frequency shifted signals respectively; and wherein said output module comprises a code word identification module comprising a comparison module adapted for comparing at least one convolved signal representation of said n convolved signal representations with a predetermined criteria and thereby to determine whether said code word is encoded in the frequency shifted 10 signal corresponding to said convolved signal representation.

28. The communication receiver of claim 25 to 27 wherein said convolution module comprises a word convolution module comprising: - a plurality of k(1)= n delay modules configured and operable for applying k(1) 15 different time delays to the received signal and thereby generate k(1) respective time delayed signals being copies of said received signal delayed by said k(1) respective time delays; and - at least a first word convolution stage S(1) comprising: iii. a code word provision module adapted to provide k(1) data portions 20 indicative of n symbol constituents of said code word; and iv. a plurality of k(1) symbol convolution modules; whereby each symbol convolution module of said plurality of k(1) symbol convolution modules is connected for receiving from a respective delay module of said plurality of delay modules, a corresponding time delayed signal, which is 25 generated thereby, and is connected for receiving from said code word provision module, a corresponding symbol constituent of said k(1) symbol constituents which location in said code words corresponds to the respective time delay of the time delayed signal of the respective delay module, and is configured and operable for convolving said time delayed 30 signal with said corresponding symbol constituent to generate a respective symbol-convolved signal representations indicative of whether said symbol constituent is encoded in the corresponding time delayed signal; said k(1) symbol convolution modules thereby generate k(1) symbol- - 72 - 266379/4 convolved signal representations indicative of whether said k(1) symbol constituents of the code word are encoded in a timely order in said received signal. 5

29. The communication receiver of claim 28 wherein said carrier frequency analyzer module comprises a time to frequency transformation module adapted for receiving said k(1) symbol-convolved signal representations from said code word convolution module and configured and operable for applying time to frequency transformation to said k(1) symbol-convolved signal representations to obtain a frequency based representation of 10 said n-symbol-convolved signal representations.

30. The communication receiver of claim 29 wherein said time to frequency transformation is a Fourier transform; and wherein a peak in said frequency based representation satisfying a predetermined criteria indicates said code word being 15 encoded in the received signal; a frequency index of said peak in said frequency based representation indicates a shift of the carrier frequency of said received signal; and an intensity of said peak indicates significance level of said code word being encoded in the received signal. 20

31. The communication receiver of claim 30 wherein said word convolution module comprises a convolution stage cascade comprising said first convolution stage S(1) and one or more cascaded additional convolution stages S(2) to (L) each of the additional convolution stages S(L) being configured and operable for receiving the k(L-1) symbol- convolved signal representations from convolution stage S(L-1) preceding and 25 aggregating the symbol-convolved signal representations to generate a set having a lower number of k(L) = k(L-1)/N symbol-convolved signal representation pertaining to larger symbols of the code word; and a selector module configured and operable for selectively operating said time to frequency transformation module based on the symbol-convolved signal representations 30 obtained from a selected stage of the set of convolution stages thereby enabling controllable adjustment of processing power requirements and accuracy of identification of said code word in the received signal.- 73 - 266379/4

32. A satellite communication terminal adapted for receiving a plurality of designated communication frames transmitted in a forward link from a satellite to said terminal, wherein said satellite operates in a beam-hopping mode and said 5 communication terminal is associated with a certain group of one or more respective groups of communication terminals associated with respective beams transmitted by said satellite in said beam-hopping mode; wherein the satellite communication terminal comprises: a signal receiving module configured and operable for performing signal receipt 10 operation during a forwards link transmission of a respective beam of the beam-hoping mode which is associated with the certain group for receiving and processing the communication frame transmitted in said forward link from said satellite; and wherein said signal receiving module comprises a signal acquisition system according to any one of claims 1 to 19 configured and operable to process at least a part 15 of the communication frame received in the forward link from said satellite and to apply carrier locking on to a carrier frequency of said respective beam by identifying at least one code word in the respective communication frame and determine a time index at which said code word is encoded in the received signal and a carrier frequency over which said code word is encoded in the received signal. 20

33. A satellite communication terminal adapted for receiving a plurality of designated communication sub-frames transmitted in a forward link from a satellite to said terminal, wherein said communication terminal is associated with a certain group of one or more respective groups of satellite communication terminals, and each 25 designated communication sub-frame is a respective portion of a communication frame, which transmitted from said satellite in said forwards link and comprises N communication sub-frames designated to serves respective one or more groups of satellite communication terminals; wherein the satellite communication terminal comprises: 30 a scheduling module configured and operable for determining a time slot of said designated communication sub-frame within the communication frame transmitted by the satellite; said scheduling module comprises:- 74 - 266379/4 - a forward link scheduler configured and operable for assigning a forwards link schedule for receiving said designated communication sub-frame at said time slot; and - a return link scheduler configured and operable for assigning a return link 5 schedule for transmitting information to the satellite during time slots other than said time slot of the designated communication sub-frame; and a signal receiving module associated with said scheduling module and configured and operable for performing signal receipt operation during said forwards link schedule for receiving and processing said designated sub-frame of the 10 communication frame transmitted in said forward link from said satellite; and wherein said signal receiving module comprises a signal acquisition system according to any one of claims 1 to 19 configured and operable to process at least a part of the communication frame received in the forward link from said satellite and to lock on to said designated communication sub-frame by identify at least one code word in 15 the received signal designating said designated sub-frame and determine a time index (sample position) at which said code word is encoded in the received signal and a carrier frequency over which said code word is encoded in the received signal.

34. The satellite communication terminal according to claim 33 wherein a signal 20 transmitting module and the signal receiving module thereof are configured for operating at mutually exclusive time slots for transmitting and receiving said return and forward links respectively.

35. The satellite communication terminal according to claim 34 wherein said a 25 carrier frequency locking module of said signal receiving module is not activated during said return link schedule thereby allowing a carrier frequency of said forward link to drift out of tune; and wherein said signal acquisition system is configured for operating upon said forward link schedule for simultaneously analyzing a time frame portion of the received forward link signal, in conjunction with a plurality of possible carrier 30 frequencies to determine in real time an actual carrier frequency of the forwards link signal received by the terminal.- 75 - 266379/4

36. The satellite communication terminal according to claim 35, wherein said period of non-activation is caused by a transmitter operating in a beam-hopping mode.

37. The satellite communication terminal according to any one of claim 33 to 36, 5 wherein said scheduling module is configured and operable for generating a request for allocation of return link capacity in another beam or a different satellite, thereby when a terminal switches a beam or a satellite, it is able to immediately utilize said allocated capacity over the new (switched-to) beam or at the new satellite.- 1 - 266379/3 A METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR SATELLITE COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGICAL