Redundancy system for a telecommunication system and related methods

A redundancy system for a co-channel telecommunications system, the redundancy system comprising:

• at least a first modulator and a second modulator, the first modulator and the second modulator each comprising:
• a symbol mapper coupled to a parallel bit signal, the symbol mapper comprising a symbol timing clock and configured to route each of a plurality of parallel bits received through the parallel bit signal to a plurality of significant bit signals;
• a premapped symbol interface (PMSI) encoder configured to receive the plurality of significant bit signals and encode them into a real double-data rate (DDR) signal and an imaginary DDR signal;
• and
• a PMSI decoder configured to receive the real DDR signal and the imaginary DDR signal and decode the real DDR signal and the imaginary DDR signal into the plurality of significant bit signals;
• and
• the redundancy system further comprising a transmit symbol timing circuit coupled with the symbol timing clock in the symbol mapper of the first modulator and the symbol mapper of the second modulator;
• wherein the PMSI encoder, PMSI decoder, and the transmit symbol timing circuit are coupled together through an interface bus.

A method of providing redundancy for a co-channel telecommunications system, the method comprising:

• sending a first signal to a satellite with a first modulator;
• receiving a combined signal from the satellite with a second modulator using an interface bus, the combined signal comprising the first signal and a second signal;
• sending a copy of the first signal to the second modulator using the interface bus;
• cancelling the first signal from the combined signal with the second modulator to produce the second signal using the copy of the first signal;
• sending a copy of the received combined signal to at least one redundant modulator using the interface bus;
• sending a premapped symbol interface (PMSI) signal to the redundant modulator using the interface bus, the PMSI signal corresponding with a copy of the first signal and comprising a plurality of significant bit signals;
• cancelling the first signal from the copy of the received combined signal with the redundant modulator using the PMSI signal to produce the second signal and at least one modulator performance metric;
• and
• transmitting the at least one modulator performance metric to an external evaluation module.