US Patent 7986624 Quality of service enhancements for adaptive coding and modulation

A process is described to build frames for transmission with a modcode adapted to the signal quality of a destination terminal. The order of transmission may be based, at least in part, on the age of a packet as defined by a timestamp. Data packets assigned to the same modcode may be grouped in the same frame, with precedence given to older timestamps. For data packets with certain quality of service designations, timestamps may be modified to expedite forwarding. The amount of modification may, for example, be based on factors related to delay and latency.