Patent ID: 7209711

Claim:
A method for optimizing data transmission in a wireless digital communication system including a base station and a plurality of user equipment (UEs), wherein a first subset of the UEs have pending downlink transmissions and a second subset of the UEs do not have pending downlink transmissions, the method comprising: (a) receiving blocks of downlink data at the base station for distribution to the plurality of UEs in the first subset; (b) transmitting from the base station to at least one UE in the first subset a request to begin downlink channel quality measurements, whereby the base station does not transmit a request to begin downlink channel quality measurements to the UEs in the second subset due to not having pending downlink transmissions; (c) the at least one UE in the first subset measuring and reporting the downlink channel quality to the base station; (d) the at least one UE in the first subset receiving a downlink physical channel allocation signal from the base station; (e) the at least one UE in the first subset setting up transmission parameters based on the downlink physical channel allocation; and (f) the at least one UE in the first subset receiving blocks of the downlink data from the base station in accordance with the downlink physical channel allocation.