Patent ID: 7974261

Claim:
A method of operating a base station having a periodic downlink timing structure in which beacon slots occur on a periodic basis in the downlink, the method comprising: monitoring, during a beacon slot, to detect the receipt of an access probe signal, the beacon slot including a plurality of superslots, the superslots within a beacon slot being identifiable through the use of a superslot index, each superslot including a plurality of symbol transmission time periods; transmitting a response to the access probe signal, the response including information indicating at least one of: i) a main superslot timing offset correction, the main superslot timing offset correction being an integer multiple of a superslot time period and being one of a plurality of possible main superslot timing offset correction values and ii) a superslot identifier indicating the position of a downlink superslot within the beacon slot during which the base station received the access probe signal to which the received response corresponds.