Iridium Satellite LLC

Nortel Networks Corporation

Northern Telecom Limited

Hermon Pon

George Xenakis

Rafi Rabipour

Charles Woloszynski

Chung-Cheung Chu

Jayesh Patel

In one implementation, a communications satellite includes a main antenna system and a communications controller. The main antenna system is configured to send communications to and receive communications from one or more terrestrial terminal devices. The communications controller has a memory storing a plurality of terminal attribute sets, each of which specifies attributes for communicating with a corresponding class of terrestrial terminal devices. The communications controller is configured to receive a terminal class identifier from an active terrestrial terminal device, identify, from among the stored terminal attribute sets, a particular terminal attribute set as corresponding to the terminal class identifier received from the active terrestrial terminal device, and control the communications satellite to communicate with the active terrestrial terminal device according to the attributes for communicating specified in the particular terminal attribute set identified as corresponding to the terminal class identifier received from the active terrestrial terminal device.

Satellite communications with multiple classes of terrestrial terminal devices

In one implementation, congestion in a satellite communications network is managed based on current resource usage information received for a primary satellite servicing a terminal that is requesting to initiate a communications session. The current resource usage information is received within a communications session setup procedure that identifies a type of the communications session being requested by the terminal. Resources for serving the communications session are determined based on the type of the communications session being requested by the terminal. Thereafter, a determination is made as to whether sufficient resources are available at the primary satellite for servicing the communications session. In response to determining that sufficient resources are not available at the primary satellite for servicing the communications session, a congestion mitigation strategy is determined for servicing the communications session and sent to the primary satellite for implementation.

Managing congestion in a satellite communications network

In a TDMA mobile-to-mobile connection, the end-to-end audio signal quality as well as system performance can be improved by providing digital signal processors the capability to automatically switch configuration such that each digital signal processor in a mobile-to-mobile communication connection can automatically identify a TDMA mobile-to-mobile connection and bypass the speech encoding and decoding processes within the digital signal processors. The two digital signal processors are virtually connected at the channel codecs.

System for TDMA mobile-to-mobile VSELP CODEC bypass

System for TDMA mobile-to-mobile VSELP codec bypass

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McKinney, TX, United States of America

Hermon Pon