Patent ID: 7342956

Claim:
A method to determine whether a first wireless terminal may transmit on an uplink to a servicing base station in a cellular wireless communication system, the method comprises: receiving four Radio Frequency (RF) bursts from the servicing base station, wherein the four RF bursts carry a data block that includes: Unlink State Flag (USF) bits; and Data bits intended for a second wireless terminal; processing the four RF bursts to produce the data block in an encoded format, wherein processing the four RF bursts to produce the data block comprises: for each of four received RF bursts: down converting each RF burst to produce a baseband signal; sampling the baseband signal to produce a plurality of samples; pre-equalization processing the plurality of samples; and equalizing the plurality of samples to produce a plurality of soft decisions corresponding to the RF burst; combining the plurality of soft decisions of the four RF bursts to form the data block; and de-interleaving the data block; and partially decoding the data block in the encoded format to extract the USF bits; and using the USF bits to determine whether the first wireless terminal may transmit on the uplink to the servicing base station.