Method and system of handling over routing of communication protocol data between two satellite communication transponders

A system for handling handover of satellite communication between a gateway and a terminal from a setting satellite transponder to a rising satellite transponder, said system comprising:

• a transmitter associated with said gateway;
• a packet tagging module comprised within the transmitter, configured to tag packets of the satellite communication with serial numbers;
• a modulator, comprised within the transmitter, configured to modulate the tagged packets;
• a receiver associated with said terminal;
• at least one demodulator comprised within the receiver, configured to demodulate the modulated, tagged packets;
• a buffer, comprised within the receiver, configured to buffer the incoming tagged packets;
• an arbitrator, comprised within the receiver, configured to track the tagged packets' serial number and synchronize the packets received from the two transponders;
• and
• wherein the arbitrator is further configured to emit the packets to a network interface in a correct order according to the serial number, to obtain a seamless handover, avoid packet loss and prevent packet duplication,
• wherein said buffer can be implemented in one of the following places in the receiver chain:
• In-phase/Quadrature (I/Q) output of the demodulator, Base Band Frame (BBFrame) output of a decoder, Transport Stream (TS) output of a decoder, communication protocol packets at the output of the de-encapsulator, and in the arbitrator,
• wherein said receiver further comprises at least two demodulators and wherein one demodulator is associated with the reception path of the rising satellite, and another demodulator is associated with the reception path of the setting satellite, and wherein each of said demodulators is associated with a buffer memory, and
• wherein in case the rising satellite has a longer path than that of the setting satellite, the arbitrator is programmed to synchronize the handover between the two satellite transponders by applying the steps of:
• stopping reception of packets from the setting satellite, receiving packets only from the rising satellite;
• remembering the serial number sequential value of the last packet received from the setting satellite transponder;
• and
• waiting until the serial number's sequential value of the packet of the rising satellite transponder reaches the said remembered last serial number sequential value.