Patent ID: 8625442

Claim:
A method of operating a base station in a wireless communication system, the method comprising: receiving a data packet from a user equipment device via contention-based uplink access, the data packet comprising an identifier that uniquely identifies the user equipment device in the wireless communication system; decoding the received data packet; when the received data packet is correctly decoded, receiving a buffer status report with the data packet, the buffer status report indicating an amount of data remaining to be transmitted by the user equipment device; analyzing the buffer status report to determine the amount of data remaining to be transmitted by the user equipment device; preparing an acknowledgment message such that its content is influenced by the amount of data remaining to be transmitted by the user equipment device; sending the acknowledgment message to the user equipment device within a designated response window, the acknowledgment message comprising the identifier of the user equipment device, wherein the acknowledgement message is sent using a signaling channel between the base station and the user equipment device.