Patent ID: 7529193

Claim:
A method for allocating bandwidth in a broadband wireless communication system, wherein the wireless communication system includes a plurality of Customer Premise Equipment in communication with associated base stations, and wherein the base stations maintain uplink and downlink sub-frame maps representative of the bandwidth allocations in the uplink and downlink communication paths, the method comprising: (a) determining an incremental bandwidth requirement for a selected Customer Premises Equipment; (b) transmitting an incremental bandwidth request to a base station that is associated with the selected Customer Premises Equipment, wherein the incremental bandwidth request contains information indicative of the incremental bandwidth requirement determined in step (a); (c) determining an aggregate bandwidth requirement for the selected Customer Premises Equipment; (d) determining whether an aggregate bandwidth request should be transmitted to the base station associated with the selected Customer Premises Equipment such that an aggregate bandwidth request is sent periodically, wherein the aggregate bandwidth request contains information indicative of the aggregate bandwidth requirement determined in step (c); (e) if the aggregate bandwidth request is determined to be required in step (d), transmitting the aggregate bandwidth request to the associated base station and returning to step (a), else returning to step (a) without transmitting the aggregate bandwidth request; (f) obtaining a packet from an associated Customer Premises Equipment; (g) determining whether the packet of step (f) is a padding packet; (h) if the packet is a padding packet, alerting a base station CPU of the padding packet, else returning to step (f); (i) reducing a bandwidth allocation of the associated Customer Premises Equipment; and (j) returning to step (f).