Patent ID: 8842565

Claim:
A method implemented by a base station of assigning resources on a downlink control channel to a group of acknowledgment channels for sending acknowledgement signals to a group of scheduled mobile terminals transmitting on an uplink traffic channel, the method comprising: for each acknowledgement channel, determining a required transmit energy per resource element (TEPRE) based on the channel conditions experienced by a corresponding mobile terminal assigned to the acknowledgement channel; and assigning, in sorted order depending on the required TEPREs, each acknowledgement channel to a channel group, wherein acknowledgement channels in the same channel groups share the same downlink resources; and wherein determining, for each acknowledgement channel, the required TEPRE based on the channel conditions comprises: determining a reference signal transmit energy; estimating a signal quality of the acknowledgement channel; determining a target signal quality to meet a predetermined error performance requirement; and computing the required TEPRE for the acknowledgement channel from the reference signal transmit energy, estimated signal quality of the acknowledgement channel, and target signal quality.