Patent ID: 7957418

Claim:
A method for use in providing data communications in a wireless communication system, where data is communicated between a mobile station and a wireless communication network in a plurality of data bursts within time slots assigned to the mobile station, the method comprising the acts of: receiving, through a wireless transceiver, data in a time slot W; tuning the wireless transceiver, during a first portion of a time slot X which consecutively follows the time slot W, for transmission; reading transmit data from a transmit data queue and encoding the transmit data in a data burst in accordance with a data burst format; and causing the encoded transmit data to be transmitted in the data burst during a second portion of the time slot X, up to or across a time boundary between the time slot X and a time slot Y which consecutively follows the time slot X; wherein the wireless communication system has downlink time slots with time boundaries that are in time alignment with time boundaries of the uplink time slots.