This disclosure relates in general to communications and, but not by way of limitation, to providing enhanced communications services to users of a communications system.
In some topologies of communications systems, groups of users share some or all of the forward link. For example, in some satellite communications systems, users share spot beams for communicating with a service provider (e.g., via a base station and/or gateway). Communications services provided to the users over the shared forward link may be affected by a number of factors, including bandwidth and other link conditions, limitations on the numbers of concurrent session streams that can be supported, etc. For example, because all users sharing the forward link also share the link's bandwidth, any unnecessary redundancies in communications may cause sub-optimal utilization of the forward link.
While some techniques may be available for addressing these issues, including using multicast channels to exploit shared forward links and pre-pushing content to user caches, these techniques may have certain limitations. For example, because a communications system may only be able to support a limited number of concurrent session streams, it may be difficult for users to determine to which session streams it may be worth subscribing (e.g., particularly where the user may only be interested in a portion of the content being communicated over that stream), subscribing or unsubscribing to session streams may involve time, bandwidth costs, management overhead, processor (e.g., central processing unit (CPU)) overhead, etc.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds