Patent ID: 8374115

Claim:
In a multi-cell communication system, a method for data communication by a base station connected to a control server via a packet data network (PDN), the base station being one of a plurality of base stations serving a plurality of mobile stations in a plurality of cells, the method comprising: maintaining a synchronized timing of radio transmission frames with other base stations of the plurality of base stations by synchronizing to a reference common to the plurality of base stations; receiving data distribution packets from the control server, each data distribution packet containing a synchronization protocol header with a packet sequence number and a time synchronization parameter; decoding the packet sequence numbers and restoring the sequential order of the received distribution data packets based on the packet sequence numbers; decoding the time synchronization parameters and determining start times for radio transmission frames based on the time synchronization parameters; determining whether a distribution data packet has been lost or received incorrectly, and, if a distribution data packet has been lost or received incorrectly, activating an error protection mechanism to avoid interfering with transmissions by other base stations in the plurality of base stations; and transmitting broadcast data using the same time-frequency resource as other base stations in the plurality of base stations in a single frequency network (SFN).