Patent ID: 8331377

Claim:
A forward link scheduler, comprising: a master scheduler, comprising: at least one processor, wherein said at least one processor corresponds to at least one sector; and at least one memory operably connected to said at least one processor, wherein said master scheduler executes instructions stored in said at least one memory, said instructions comprising: selecting a first carrier of a plurality of carriers for transmission of a plurality of packets of an expedited forwarding flow with multi-carrier assignment, wherein a plurality of candidate packets comprise the plurality of packets of the expedited forwarding flow, wherein a first candidate packet is associated with the first carrier and a second candidate packet is associated with another carrier of the plurality of carriers, wherein at least one of the plurality of packets of the expedited forwarding flow is associated with the first candidate packet and also with the second candidate packet, and wherein the at least one of the plurality of packets of the expedited forwarding flow associated with the first carrier has a highest packet metric of the at least one of the plurality of packets of the expedited forwarding flow selected for the first carrier and any other carrier of the plurality of carriers, wherein a packet metric is calculated as: PacketMetric ⁡ [ k ] = 1 Span ⁡ [ k ] ⁢ ∑ i ∈ P ⁡ [ k ] ⁢ BitMetric ⁡ [ i ] wherein k represents an index to a candidate transmission instance, Span[k] represents a span defined for a corresponding transmission format, P[k] represents a set of octets included in the candidate transmission instance, and BitMetric[i] represents a bit metric of an i th octet included in the candidate transmission instance.