Granted Patent B2

US 12,341,598 · App. 17/886,558 · Granted Jun 24, 2025

Inventors: Channasandra Ravishankar (Clarksburg, MD); Gaguk Zakaria (College Park, MD); John E. Corrigan, III (Chevy Chase, MD)

Assignee: HUGHES NETWORK SYSTEMS LLC

H04B7/18513H04W52/0274H04W72/046H04W72/1263H04W72/231

Abstract

Claims (35)

1. A satellite communication system comprising:

a satellite gateway configured to communicate with a plurality of satellites over an air-interface;

a medium access control (MAC) layer in a protocol stack of the satellite gateway that supports the air-interface, wherein the MAC layer comprises a resource aggregation block to aggregate radio resources when allocating radio resources to a user terminal in a beam; and

a forward link frame structure with a number of sub-frames to communicate with the user terminal, wherein the user terminal is configured to wake up every Nth sub-frame, N being an integer greater than one, to conserve power resources of the user terminal.

2. The satellite communication system of claim 1 , wherein the resource aggregation block comprises carrier aggregation to increase a number of allocated carriers in the beam to the user terminal.

3. The satellite communication system of claim 2 , wherein the resource aggregation block comprises beam aggregation to allocate resources of an adjacent beam to the user terminal in the beam.

4. The satellite communication system of claim 3 , wherein the MAC layer schedules the user terminal on a first carrier of the beam as well as a second carrier from the adjacent beam to improve throughput for the user terminal in the beam.

5. The satellite communication system of claim 4 , wherein MAC layer first schedules the user terminal on the first carrier, and in response to a determination closeness to the adjacent beam, the MAC layer schedules on the second carrier associated with the adjacent beam.

6. The satellite communication system of claim 5 , wherein:

the user terminal is configured to send a battery status to the gateway, and

in response to a signal from the gateway, the user terminal is configured to turn off portions of electronics in the user terminal to conserve battery resources.

7. The satellite communication system of claim 6 , wherein the signal from the gateway is a discontinuous reception (DRX) signal from the gateway.

8. The satellite communication system of claim 1 , wherein the user terminal is configured to wake up for a single slot of every Nth sub-frame.

9. A method for satellite communication comprising:

communicating by satellite gateway with a plurality of satellites over an air-interface;

supporting the air-interface with a medium access control (MAC) layer in a protocol stack of the satellite gateway that supports the air-interface;

allocating additional radio resources to a user terminal on a first beam by the MAC layer to provide resource aggregation that increases throughput for the user terminal;

communicating with the user terminal with a forward link frame structure with a number of sub-frames; and

waking up the user terminal every Nth sub-frame, N being an integer greater than one, to conserve power resources of the user terminal.

10. The method of claim 9 , further comprising allocating resources of an adjacent beam to the user terminal on the first beam.

11. The method of claim 10 , further comprising scheduling the user terminal on a first carrier of the first beam as well as a second carrier of the adjacent beam to improve throughput for the user terminal in the first beam.

12. The method of claim 11 , wherein MAC layer first schedules the user terminal on the first carrier, and after determining a user is close to the adjacent beam, the MAC layer schedules the user terminal on the second carrier associated with the adjacent beam.

13. The method of claim 9 , further comprising:

sending a battery status to the gateway, and

in response to a signal from the gateway, turning off portions of electronics in the user terminal to conserve battery resources.

14. The method of claim 13 , wherein the signal from the gateway is a discontinuous reception (DRX) signal from the gateway.

15. The method of claim 9 , wherein the user terminal wakes up for a single slot of every Nth sub-frame.

16. A satellite communication system comprising:

a satellite gateway communicating with a plurality of satellites over an air-interface;

a medium access control (MAC) layer in a protocol stack of the satellite gateway that supports the air-interface comprises a resource aggregation block to aggregate radio resources when allocating radio resources to a user terminal;

a resource aggregation block provides beam aggregation that allocates resources of an adjacent beam to a user terminal on a beam by first scheduling the user terminal on a first carrier, and after determining the user terminal is close to the adjacent beam, the MAC layer schedules the user terminal on a second carrier associated with the adjacent beam; and

a forward link frame structure with a number of sub-frames that communicates with the user terminal, wherein the user terminal wakes up every Nth sub-frame, N being an integer greater than one, to conserve power resources of the user terminal.

17. The satellite communication system of claim 16 , wherein:

the user terminal sends a battery status to the gateway, and

in response to a signal from the gateway, the user terminal turns off portions of electronics in the user terminal to conserve battery resources.

Assignments (1)

Continuity (2)

References Cited (24)