Patent ID: 7729703

Claim:
A wireless communication device comprising: a receiver configured to receive signals on a shared channel on a serving cell; a controller coupled to the receiver, the controller configured to control operations of the wireless communication device; a channel quality indicator message generation module coupled to the controller, the channel quality indicator message generation module configured to generate a channel quality indicator message for each candidate cell of multiple candidate cells in an active set of cells, wherein the channel quality indicator message includes a cell identifier identifying a candidate cell for which channel quality is being reported, a channel quality indicator for the candidate cell identified by the cell identifier, and a candidate cell map, wherein the candidate cell map includes a list of the multiple candidate cells in the active set of cells, and wherein the list is ordered based at least on channel qualities of the multiple candidate cells as determined by the wireless communication device; a transmitter operating under control of the controller to send each channel quality indicator message on a medium access control layer to a respective one of the multiple candidate cells in the active set of cells; and a serving cell switch module coupled to the controller, the serving cell switch module configured to switch from the serving cell to a new serving cell from the multiple candidate cells based on the candidate cell map.