Satellite communications system and method of supporting ATM cell transmissions in a DVB environment

ATM cells (131-133, 141-143) are encapsulated within a DVB satellite transmission environment (10) to provide satellite broadband capabilities (74). as shown in FIG. 1. Specifically, DVB multiplexing (as opposed to ATM multiplexing), either at the ground station (71) associated with a content provider (32-28) or within a satellite (12) itself, consolidates the use of a mapping function (170) between the Program Identity (PID) of an MPEG transport (data-) stream and an ATM physical layer (PHY). More particularly, robust packaging of full (131-133) and partial (134, 144) ATM, cells within a DVB transport stream packet (150) is supported by a system-wide association between PIDs and ATM PHYs, whereby an addressed terminal or subscriber unit (18-22) reassembles ATM cells (160-162) based on PID information contained in received DVB transport stream packets (150). In the event that ATM cell information is dispersed (134, 144) between different DVB transport stream packets (150), buffering of the PID-related information allows subsequent reconstruction of the related ATM cell. All ATM processing is hence accomplished in an ATM domain, with onward routing controlled by an ATM switch fabric core (108) responsive to ATM PHY data.