Patent ID: 7965683

Claim:
A method for allocating a control region to a subscriber in a wireless communication system comprising: assigning a higher priority to Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request Acknowledgement (HARQ) Acknowledgement Channel (ACKCH) relative to downlink Channel Quality Indicator Channel (CQICH); allocating one of HARQ ACKCH and CQICH to a shared control region within a resource frame; in response to an allocation of both HARQ ACKCH and CQICH to a same control region within a same resource frame, accepting only HARQ ACKCH within the control region as a result of an override of the CQICH, based on the higher relative priority, wherein the override occurs when a previous and un-expired set of CQICH information exists; in response to a rejection of CQICH as a result of an override, estimating a downlink channel quality information for the subscriber based on a current set of uplink channel quality information; and in response to a reception of the HARQ ACKCH information, updating the subscriber uplink channel quality information.