US Patent 8660481 Techniques for providing broadcast services on spot beam satellites

Techniques for providing broadcast services on spot beam satellite are provided. These techniques enable the mission of a spot beam satellite system to be changed from providing spot beam transmission to broadcast transmissions, and vice versa, without requiring that the satellite be reconfigured. Broadcast data may be encoded and transmitted concurrently on a plurality of spot beams. According to some embodiments, the broadcast data may be encoded using a space-time code and/or forward error corrected (FEC) encoded to enable a receiver to correct errors in the signal received from the spot beam satellite.