Viasat, Inc.

Nirmalkumar Velayudhan

Joshua J Righetti

Joshua G Slater

Veena Padmanabhan

Brian T Sleight

Donald Wesley Becker

John Hai O'Neill

Arthur Senyue Loh

Mark D Dankberg

Jonathan M Putnam

Changping Li

Vitaliy Sivetsiy

Embodiments provide efficient delivery of multiple media channels to in-transport terminals, for example, to reduce channel zapping delay in a bandwidth efficient manner. For example, an in-transport media (ITM) server can distribute multiple channel offerings to ITM clients in a transport craft. Meanwhile, the ITM server can monitor which channel offerings are presently being consumed via the ITM clients, and can transmit feedback to a remote media server, accordingly. Based on the feedback, the ITM server can receive the channel offerings from the remote media server, in such a way that one or more of the channel offerings is received as a low-fidelity instance when not presently being consumed via any of the ITM clients, and one or more of the channel offerings is received as a high-fidelity instance when presently being consumed via at least one of the ITM clients.

In-transport multi-channel media delivery

Continuing electronic media entertainment on a personal electronic device (PED) after completion of a travel segment. Streaming characteristics for streaming of an electronic media item to a PED on board an aircraft via a first connection may be monitored and, if streaming of the remaining portion of the electronic media item will exceed the remaining travel time, trigger some or all of an excess portion of the electronic media item to be sent to the PED. The PED may store the excess portion in an access-controlled media file. After completion of the travel segment (e.g., at the destination location), the PED may resume playback of the electronic media item by obtaining a playback control code via a second, different connection. The second connection may be a different type of connection, or may be an indirect connection, in some cases.

Continuing electronic media entertainment after completion of travel segment

Embodiments provide popularity-based adaptive bitrate management of linear programming over constrained communications links. Embodiments can operate in context of a communications network communicating with multiple mobile client devices disposed in one or more transport craft. A number of channel offerings, including channels providing linear programming, can be made available via the communications network for consumption by the client devices. Embodiments can compute channel popularity scores for the channel offerings based on a predicted popularity, an estimated popularity, a measured popularity, etc. A bitrate can be determined for each (some or all) of the channel offerings based at least in part on its channel popularity score, so that more popular channel offerings can be communicated at higher bitrates. Determined-bitrate instances of the channel offerings can be obtained and/or generated, and delivered via the communications network, to the client devices for consumption.

Popularity-aware bitrate adaptation of linear programming for mobile communications

Capacity enhancement of a direct communication link using a variable redundancy delivery network. An estimated information rate between a source node and a terminal node may be partitioned into a first information rate provided via the direct communication link and a second information rate to be provided via the variable redundancy delivery network. One or more parameters of the variable redundancy delivery network may be calculated to provide the second information rate based on a non-uniform probability density of messages requested by the terminal node. Capacity and reliability of storage media devices in the variable redundancy delivery network may be traded off to provide the second information rate. The variable redundancy delivery network may implement various coding schemes and per-message coding rates that may be determined based on the non-uniform probability distribution of the source message library.

Enhancing capacity of a direct communication link

A distributed delivery network for capacity enhancement of a communication link shared by multiple communication devices for network access service. The distributed delivery network may include one or more distributed storage devices, some of which may include at least one rotating disk storage device, a network interface, and one or more environmental sensors. Each distributed storage device may monitor data from the environmental sensor(s) and transition between an active state where messages are stored in or retrieved from the storage device, and a standby state where access is suppressed. The distributed storage devices may self-organize control operations for the distributed delivery network including message storage and retrieval and redundancy of messages, which may be determined by frequency of requests for the messages.

Self-organized storage nodes for distributed delivery network

Embodiments relate to systems and methods for modifying the transmission rate of media data in order to improve craft-based media playback system performance during handover events in a communication system.

Variable size linear video content buffers for uninterrupted handover in a multi-beam satellite system

Embodiments relate to methods and systems for managing media content distribution rights to a media client on a craft to ensure that the distribution of media content items is consistent with media content distribution rights.

Systems and methods for managing content distribution to an in-transit media system

Embodiments provide quality of service for media content delivery over capacity-constrained communications links to user devices by exploiting usage models and path awareness. For example, one or more uncongested beams can be identified as preceding one or more congested beams (e.g., by computing a congestion map) along a predicted transport path of a user device moving through a multi-beam satellite communications system. A prediction can be made aps to one or more future requests that are likely to be made by the user device for pre-positionable types of media content, and that are likely to be serviced by one of the subsequent congested beams. When such a request for pre-positionable media content is predicted, embodiments can schedule transmission of at least a portion of the media content over one or more of the preceding uncongested beams for storage local to the user device, thereby pre-positioning the content at the client prior to reaching the congested beam.

Growing community of inventors

San Marcos, CA, United States of America

Nirmalkumar Velayudhan