Patent ID: 9270508
Filing Date: 2016-02-23
CPC Classification: H04L,H04W

Claim Text:
1. A wireless communication system in which a base station performs wireless communication with a plurality of fixed or mobile subscriber stations, the base station maintaining connections with each of the subscriber stations by performing wireless communication in units of frames, and within each frame, allocating resources for data transmissions and signalling in the wireless communication system, said frames being divided timewise into downlink subframes for transmissions from the base station to the subscriber stations, and uplink subframes for transmissions from the subscriber stations to the base station; characterized in that each frame has a plurality of downlink subframes and a plurality of uplink subframes including, in time order, a first downlink subframe containing a preamble for synchronization purposes, a first uplink subframe, a final downlink subframe and a final uplink subframe, and in that the subscriber stations comprise first type subscriber stations and second type subscriber stations, the base station allocating downlink resources to the first type subscriber stations within only the first downlink subframe, wherein the base station is further arranged to allocate uplink resources to the first type subscriber stations within only the final uplink subframe, wherein the base station is further arranged to allocate resources to the second type subscriber stations within at least the first uplink subframe and the final downlink subframe, and wherein the base station is operable to define a frame configuration in which the number of downlink subframes and uplink subframes in each frame is varied dynamically in accordance with the relative proportion of second type subscriber stations to first type subscriber stations currently being served by the base station.