Patent ID: 7315531

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: a first demodulator configured to use a data subchannel demodulation format to demodulate a received signal to provide a packet of data; a second demodulator configured to use a control subchannel demodulation format to demodulate said received signal to provide a demodulated control subchannel signal; and a first decoder configured to extract a rate indication signal from said demodulated control subchannel signal, the rate indication signal indicating a data rate of said packet of data, wherein the data subchannel demodulation format comprises a first Walsh sequence covering, and the control subchannel demodulation format comprises a second Walsh sequence covering that is orthogonal to the first Walsh covering, wherein the rate indication signal is selected from a set of rate indication signals corresponding to a set of data rates, and wherein the length of the rate indication signal varies in inverse proportion with the data rates such that a proportion of data in the data packet overwritten by the selected rate indication signal remains constant.