Patent ID: 8228850

Claim:
A method of transmitting control information in a wireless communications system, the method comprising: dividing a frame into at least three mini frames, wherein the mini frames repeat periodically; designating at least two of the at least three mini frames as downlink mini frames, denoting a concatenation of all downlink mini frames as a downlink subframe, wherein at least two of the downlink mini frames are concatenated to form a concatenated mini frame; designating at least one of the at least three mini frames as an uplink mini frame, denoting a concatenation of all uplink mini frames as an uplink subframe; designating a legacy control region, wherein the legacy control region occurs in each occurrence of the downlink subframe; designating a new downlink control region and a data region in each of at least two of the at least two downlink mini frames within the downlink subframe; designating a new uplink control region in at least one of the at least one uplink mini frames; transmitting an indication of the designated downlink and designated uplink mini frames to new mobile stations, wherein the indication is a bitmap, wherein each bit in the bitmap corresponds to one respective mini frame, and wherein a set bit indicates that the corresponding mini frame is concatenated with an adjacent mini frame; transmitting control information to legacy mobile stations in the legacy control region; and transmitting control information to the new mobile stations in the new downlink control region.