Patent ID: RE42788

Claim:
A method of synchronizing and transporting data in a wireless communication system, wherein the wireless communication system includes a plurality of customer premise equipment (CPE) in communication with associated and corresponding base stations, and wherein the base stations maintain uplink and downlink sub-frame maps representative of bandwidth allocations in uplink and downlink communication links, and wherein the base stations each include an associated and corresponding media access control (MAC) having a plurality of MAC data messages, and wherein the MAC transports a MAC data message through a MAC data packet that is mapped to at least one Transmission Convergence Data Unit (TDU) in a layered data transport architecture, and wherein the data includes ATM cell data configured into at least one ATM cell, the method comprising the steps of: (a) obtaining a first Transmission Convergence Data Unit (TDU), wherein the first TDU includes an ATM header for a selected ATM cell, and wherein the first TDU includes ATM data bytes of the selected ATM cell; (b) determining whether an uncorrectable data error is present in the first TDU obtained in step (a); (c) obtaining a second TDU, wherein the second TDU includes remaining data bytes of the selected ATM cell; (d) determining whether an uncorrectable data error is present in the second TDU obtained in step (c); (e) discarding the entire selected ATM cell by discarding both the first and second TDUs if an uncorrectable data error is found in the first TDU, and then returning to step (a) to obtain a next selected ATM cell, else proceeding to step (f); (f) noting that an error condition exists if an uncorrectable data error is found in the second TDU obtained in step (c); and (g) passing the entire selected ATM cell to high level communication layers of the MAC and returning to step (a) to obtain a next selected ATM cell.