Patent ID: 6907248

Claim:
An apparatus for gating a dedicated physical control channel in a UTRAN (UMTS (Universal Mobile Terrestrial System) Terrestrial Access Network) having a downlink physical shared channel, shared by a plurality of UEs (User Equipments), for transmitting data, a dedicated physical control channel interlined with the downlink physical shared channel, for transmitting control data, and a dedicated physical data channel for transmitting user data, the apparatus comprising: a gating command generator for generating a gating start request for the dedicated physical control channel when there exists no data transmitted over the downlink physical shared channel and the dedicated physical data channel for a preset time, generating a gating end request when data to be transmitted over the downlink physical shared channel is generated while gating the dedicated physical control channel, and generating a gating start command or a gating end command to start or end a gating operation according to the gating start request or the gating end request; and a transmitter for inserting the created gating start command or gating end command in a specific transport format combination indicator symbol of the dedicated physical control channel, and transmitting the specific transport format combination indicator symbol to a corresponding UE.