Patent ID: 7146171

Claim:
A method for transmitting data from a mobile station to a wireless network, comprising: requesting permission to transmit data using an access channel; in response to receiving the permission message from the wireless network, transmitting the data from the mobile station to the wireless network over a control channel using a modulation and channel coding scheme determined in the wireless network, and communicated to the mobile station in the permission message; in response to receiving the transmitted data at the wireless network, soft combining the received data with previously received data, if any, until a desired decoding result is achieved, and transmitting an acknowledgment of data reception to the mobile station, where requesting permission comprises transmitting a succession of preambles to the wireless network until the permission message is received, where each preamble is transmitted with a higher power level than a preceding one of the preambles, where each preamble includes an indication of the power level at which the preamble was transmitted; determining a current channel condition between the mobile station and the wireless network by comparing the indication of the power level at which a received preamble was transmitted with the power level at which the preamble was received; determining the modulation and channel coding scheme at least partially in accordance with the determined current channel condition; and communicating the determined modulation and channel coding scheme to the mobile station in the permission message.