Patent ID: 7280513

Claim:
A method of transmission of a data frame from a first station to a second station, in a code division multiple access (CDMA) telecommunications network operating according to a hierarchical series of protocol processes including a physical layer process under the control of a radio link control (RLC) process, the method comprising the steps of: sending to the RLC process in the first station an indication of when a data frame is passed to the physical layer process for transmission to the second station, upon receipt of the indication the RLC process starting a timer to time a predetermined period before again passing the data frame to the physical layer process for retransmission to the second station unless an acknowledgement of receipt from the second station is received, feeding the physical process layer data frames by a medium access control process for controlling a common channel (MAC-C), and feeding the MAC-C process data frames by at least two medium access control processes (MAC-D) each dedicated to a corresponding second station, the indication being passed from the MAC-C process to the MAC-D process for the second station in the first station, in which upon switching communications with the second station away from via the MAC-C process to via another MAC process, any data frames for which an indication of passage to the physical layer process has not been received by the RLC layer is considered not so passed to the physical layer and so is sent from the RLC layer via said another MAC process.