Hughes Electronics Corporation

Zhengping Gao

Stephanie Demers

Anthony Robert Noerpel

Michael I Parr

Chi-Jiun Su

Chandra Joshi

An approach for performing congestion avoidance in a switching communication system is disclosed. An input port of the switching communication system receives a bandwidth request from a source. The switching communication system includes a bandwidth control processor that examines the bandwidth request, and multiple output ports. The output ports communicate with various destination sites. A congestion avoidance logic within the switching communication system generates multiple clusters based upon a transmission constraint associated with the output ports; each of the clusters corresponds to a portion of the destination sites. The congestion avoidance logic determines a cluster threshold that corresponds to traffic load distribution among the critical clusters. Additionally, the congestion avoidance logic selectively grants the bandwidth request based upon the determined cluster threshold. This congestion avoidance mechanism has applicability to a packet-switched satellite communication system with an on-board switch; the switch has transmission constraints such that the transmitters of the satellite at the output port of the switch cannot simultaneously transmit to downlink cells, which contain station terminals that are within an interfering distance from one another.

Congestion avoidance approach for a switching communication system with transmission constraints

An access terminal for initiating spot beam selection in a satellite communication system, in which the access terminal includes a receiver for measuring the received signal strength (RSS) of a multiplicity of radio frequency communication spot beam links. The access terminal is further provided with a microcontroller for comparing the received signal strengths from each of the multiplicity of spot beams to initiate information communication via a communication channel of the satellite communication system. In a described embodiment, the controller of the access terminal compares seven spot beam links to determine whether to initiate information communication with one of the seven spot beams received. Additionally, a memory coupled to the controller of the access terminal is used for storing spot beam identification information including the spot beam links assigned to the access terminal via the satellite communication system. The selection procedure employed by the system and method described facilitate a rapid selection of an appropriate spot beam identified from the multiplicity of radio frequency spot beam links received at a mobile access terminal.

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Germantown, MD, United States of America

Zhengping Gao