Patent ID: 8693445

Claim:
A method for communicating to a mobile station which timeslots are configured as packet data channel pairs with up to four packet data channel pairs configured on a carrier, and on which of the packet data channel pairs the mobile station is assigned resources, comprising: separating, by a network device having a processor and a memory, a description of packet data channel pairs into a configuration and an assignment, in which the configuration describes all reduced transmission time interval packet data channel pairs currently in use on one of a given carrier and a pair of carriers, excluding any timeslots used for non-reduced transmission time interval packet transfer and any timeslots used for circuit-switched voice or data transfer, and the assignment describes a subset of packet data channel pairs on which the mobile station can expect to transmit or receive data; and describing up to four packet data channel pairs in a 7-bit bitmap or an 8-bit bitmap, with packet data channel pair 1 configured on the two lowest-numbered timeslots whose corresponding bits in the bitmap are set to 1 and packet data channel pair 2 configured on the two timeslots with the next lowest timeslot numbers whose corresponding bits in the bitmap are set to 1.