Patent ID: 7127256
Filing Date: 2006-10-24
Classification: H04B,H04L,H04W

Abstract:
1. In a wireless communication system including a plurality of user equipment mobile terminals (UEs) and a base station, wherein a first subset of the UEs have pending downlink transmissions and a second subset of the UEs do not have pending downlink transmissions, a method of minimizing overhead signaling and optimizing radio resource utilization by restricting the transmission of channel quality measurement requests to only those UEs that have pending downlink transmissions so as to avoid unnecessary channel quality measurements performed by the UEs and also avoid unnecessary channel quality measurement requests transmitted by the base station, the method comprising: (a) each of the UEs in the first subset receiving from the base station a request to begin channel quality measurements, whereby the base station does not transmit a request to begin channel quality measurements to the UEs in the second subset due to not having pending downlink transmissions; (b) each of the UEs in the first subset performing channel quality measurements and transmitting to the base station the results of the channel quality measurements, whereby the UEs in the second subset do not perform channel quality measurements because they did not receive a request to begin channel quality measurements from the base station due to not having pending downlink transmissions; and (c) the base station allocating radio resources used by the UEs in the first subset in response to the results of the channel quality measurements transmitted to the base station by the UEs in the first subset.