Patent ID: 7379863

Claim:
A method of reducing a scheduling delay in a speech processing unit communicating with a radio network node, wherein data packets associated with a single channel are processed in the speech processing unit in a plurality of time slots that are subunits of frames, the method comprising the steps of: a) receiving a time alignment request from the radio network node, said time alignment request including timing information identifying a beginning and an ending of processing periods in the radio network node; b) selecting in the speech processing unit, one of the time slots within a first frame as a target time slot, said target time slot having a position within the first frame such that the scheduling delay between the ending of a processing period in the radio network node and the beginning of the target time slot is minimized; c) assigning a data packet associated with the channel to the target time slot within the first or a subsequent frame such that the scheduling delay in the speech processing unit is reduced; and d) adjusting the phase of the frame after assigning the data packet to the target time slot by erasing superfluous data packets; wherein the speech processing unit communicates with a plurality of radio network nodes over a different channel with each node, and the scheduling delay in the speech processing unit is reduced for each channel, and the method further comprises the steps of: calculating a scheduling delay metric representative of an overall scheduling delay in the speech processing unit for the data packets of the different channels; and storing each time alignment request received from each radio network node until each time alignment request has been fulfilled.