Patent ID: 8644295

Claim:
A method at an infrastructure equipment, the method comprising: receiving bursts of information from a mobile radio over a common air interface, wherein the bursts comprise voice bursts and signaling bursts, wherein each voice burst comprises at least one voice frame; decoding each voice burst received from the mobile radio; computing a number of bit errors in each voice frame of each voice burst, and storing the number of bit errors in each voice frame in a voice frame error counter buffer (VFECB); determining a first summed number of bit errors (E d ) that were present in a first number (N d ) of most recent voice frames stored in the VFECB; when a fade timer is determined not to be running and when a current value of the first summed number (E d ) is determined to be greater than a fade detection threshold (T d ), determining that a fade condition is detected and starting the fade timer to begin timing a duration of the fade condition such the expiration of the fade timer causes the call to be terminated; and when the fade timer is determined to be running and has not yet expired, and a signaling burst is successfully decoded to obtain signaling information, clearing the VFECB and stopping and resetting the fade timer.