Patent ID: 8081972

Claim:
A method for use by a customer premise equipment (CPE) in determining channel availability in a wireless network, the method comprising: receiving, by the CPE, a measurement request message from a base station (BS), wherein the measurement request message comprises a channel interval list that comprises at least a first section corresponding to a first interval of contiguous channels, wherein the first section comprises a first starting-channel number of the first interval of contiguous channels, a first number of channels corresponding to the total number of channels in the first interval of contiguous channels, and a first linker; performing, by the BS, a first channel measurement to determine channel availability for each channel in the first interval of contiguous channels; determining, by the BS, whether the channel interval list further comprises a second section corresponding to a second interval of contiguous channels based on the first linker; and if the channel interval list further comprises the second section, then performing, by the BS, a second channel measurement to determine channel availability for each channel in the second interval of contiguous channels.