Patent ID: 7539212

Claim:
A radio network element for communicating to a mobile user equipment a higher rate data flow received from a core network entity, the higher rate data flow being provided to the radio network element at a higher rate than user equipment can accept on a single channel, the radio network element comprising: a) a radio link control sublayer including a radio bearer service, responsive to the higher rate data flow, to provide a corresponding radio link control data flow for downlink to the user equipment; b) a media access control sublayer, responsive to the radio link control data flow, to provide a plurality of corresponding media access control data flows at a rate low enough to be acceptable to the user equipment; c) a framing protocol layer, responsive to the media access control data flows, to provide corresponding transport network layer data flows; and d) an admission control, responsive to radio access bearer parameters provided by the core network entity, to provide commands to the media access control sublayer specifying how the media access control sublayer is to allocate resources so as to communicate the higher rate data flow to the user equipment; wherein the media access control sublayer in the radio network element comprises a channel inverse multiplexer/multiplexer, responsive to the radio link control data flow, to provide the plurality of corresponding media access control data flows at a rate low enough to be acceptable to the user equipment, and to include with each lower rate data flow information indicating how the lower rate flows are to be combined by the user equipment, the lower rate data flows being suitable for transmission by the framing protocol layer according to a standard protocol not taking into account that the lower rate data flows are in combination the radio link control data flow corresponding to the higher rate data flow.