Patent ID: 8514832

Claim:
A method for transmitting user data from a set of access terminals, the method comprising: receiving at each of a first subset of the set of access terminals a scheduling decision for an interval, wherein at least one time slot of the interval is divided into a first portion and a second portion, the first portion comprising overhead channels; selecting at each of the first subset of access terminals a mode for data multiplexing, wherein a first mode comprises building user data into the first portion of the time slot using a multiplexing format; a second mode comprises building user data into at least one sub-division of the second portion of the time slot, wherein each of the at least one sub-division is associated with the multiplexing format; and a third mode comprises building user data into the first portion of the time slot and the second portion of the time slot; and transmitting from at least one of the first subset of access terminals the user data in the interval using the selected mode of data multiplexing in accordance with the scheduling decision.