Patent ID: 7162675

Claim:
A method of detecting errors in control channels of a wireless communication system, comprising: decoding at least a portion of each control channel; determining if one or more control channels were successfully received during the decoding step; and selecting one of the successfully received control channels based on at least one calculated metric including at least one path metric difference (PMD); wherein said step of selecting includes, calculating a path metric difference (PMD) metric for each control channel determined as successfully received, when more than one control channel are successfully received as determined by said determining step, and selecting one of the successfully received control channels based on the calculated PMDs, wherein said step of calculating includes, calculating at least one of a minimum path metric difference (MPMD) metric, an aggregate path metric difference (APMD) metric, and a frequency path metric difference (FPMD) metric for each successfully received control channel, wherein said step of calculating the at least a frequency path metric difference (FPMD) metric includes, performing Viterbi decoding to determine a winning path metric at each of a plurality of states, and counting a number of times by which the winning path at each state came within a threshold value of beating a competing path at said each state, wherein the winning path having the lowest frequency of coming within said threshold corresponds to the one successfully received control channel selected in the selecting step.