International Business Machines Corporation

Alex H Lautier

Jean L Monrolin

A method and a system are disclosed for synchronizing within a recurrent time frame the starting points of the transmissions from the various stations in a TDMA network wherein N stations distributed among M separate zones covered by M different down-link frequencies exchange pulse bursts through a satellite, each pulse burst being comprised of a preamble, a unique word, the transmitting station's address, and traffic data. The satellite includes a global beam antenna which covers all of the M zones and is adapted to receive M different up-link frequencies, means for converting these M up-link frequencies to M corresponding down-link frequencies, and M directional beam antennas covering the M zones, each of said M antennas being adapted to transmit the down-link frequency associated with the particular zone it covers. The bursts transmitted by the various stations are assigned a predetermined position within the frame. Each station detects whether it has received a unique word followed by the address of a given station. Upon detecting such an address, the station activates timing means which define a time interval associated with the station whose address has been detected and, at the end of that time interval, starts transmitting M successive bursts respectively destined for the M zones during predetermined time intervals within the frame. These M bursts are transmitted at different up-link frequencies so that the burst intended for a given zone will be transmitted at the up-link frequency corresponding to the down-link frequency for that zone. In accordance with an embodiment of the invention, the timing means comprise M timers respectively defining N time intervals associated with the N stations. The start of a station's transmission is determined by the timer which reaches its stopping point first.

Method and system for synchronizing a TDMA communication network

A receiver for a data transmission system employing the interleaved binary phase shift keyed modulation technique. The received signal is demodulated by means of an in-phase reference carrier and a quadrature reference carrier both of which are supplied by a clock and carrier recovery device, thereby supplying the in-phase and quadrature components of the signal. The sign of the sum of these components and that of the difference between them are selectively gated to the output of the receiver under control of the clock signal supplied by the clock and carrier recovery device. In this device, the frequency of the received signal is doubled and the signal thus obtained is modulated by the clock signal at half the signaling rate extracted from the received signal. This modulation operation yields a signal at twice the carrier frequency from which the in-phase and quadrature reference carriers are extracted.

Growing community of inventors

Nice, France

Alex H Lautier