Patent ID: 8537862

Claim:
A method for applying higher order modulation (HOM) to a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) to transmit control information from an access node to a user equipment (UE), the method comprising: selecting a downlink control information (DCI) format for a HOM PDCCH; determining a DCI block of the HOM PDCCH according to the selected DCI format; generating a sequence of coded bits to be transmitted from the DCI block; multiplexing the sequence of coded bits of the HOM PDCCH with coded bits of a non-HOM PDCCH to form a sequence of multiplexed bits; scrambling the sequence of multiplexed bits to form a sequence of scrambled bits; modulating the scrambled bits to form a sequence of modulation symbols, wherein the scrambled bits of the HOM PDCCH are modulated with higher order modulation and the higher order modulation maps three or more bits to one modulation symbol, and wherein the scrambled bits of the non-HOM PDCCH are modulated with non-higher order modulation and the non-higher order modulation maps less than three bits to one modulation symbol; and transmitting the sequence of modulation symbols on an aggregation of one or more control channel elements (CCEs).