Patent ID: 8218499

Claim:
A terminal of a cellular communication network said terminal comprising: a processor adapted to ascertain when a handover or mobility procedure is in progress; a compressor for compressing header fields of data packets using window based least-significant bits (W-LSB) encoding, said compressor being configured for: (i) adding a value representing a header field of a data packet to a compression window; (ii) encoding a value representing a header field of a data packet based on the compression window, using said window based least-significant bits (W-LSB) encoding; (iii) determining whether one or more values previously added to the compression window should be removed from said compression window; and (iv) removing said one or more previously added values from said compression window accordingly; and a transmitter for sending data packets including the encoded values for receipt by a second terminal; wherein, the compressor is further configured such that no values are removed from the compression window when a handover or mobility procedure is in progress, and values added while a handover or mobility procedure is in progress are removed after the handover or mobility procedure has completed.