Patent ID: 7385943

Claim:
A method of allocating communication resources to terminals in a multiple frequency time division multiple access (MF-TDMA) telecommunication system, comprising: transmitting digital data in selected time slots on each carrier of a plurality of carriers, wherein said resources for each of said terminals are allocated by frames which are grouped into superframes and a pattern of resources, comprising time slots and carriers, allocated to one of said terminals for transmission of real-time data in each of said frames with a number in one of said superframes remains the same during the superframes of a call to which the real time data relates and the pattern of resources allocated to the real time data call is the same for all the frames of each of said superframes; and allocating said real-time data prior to allocation of non-real-time data wherein to facilitate a search for available resources to be allocated, for each type of carrier there is provided a set of vectors or words each consisting of a series of binary digits, one value of which represents an available resource and the other value of which represents unavailability of resources, wherein said set of vectors includes, a first vector having a number of components equal to the number of time slots of the frame and the value of each component of which represents the availability of one of a plurality of frequencies for the time slot concerned, a frequency vector for each time slot having a number of components equal to the number of said plurality of frequencies, the value of each component representing the availability of a corresponding one of said plurality of frequencies, and a time slot vector for each of said plurality of frequencies having a number of components equal to the number of time slots, the value of each component representing the availability of that time slot at that one of said plurality of frequencies.