Patent ID: 7385952

Claim:
A radio communication system comprising: a base station; a plurality of subscriber stations; a channel structure operating between said base station and plurality of subscriber stations, said channel structure including an uplink channel and an associated downlink signaling channel, said uplink channel and downlink signaling channel shared by at least two of said plurality of subscriber stations and said base station, said associated downlink signaling channel indicating to said at least two subscriber stations whether said uplink channel is in polled mode, wherein one of said at least two subscriber stations is specified to next transmit to said base station over said uplink channel, or random mode, wherein any of said at least two subscriber stations with data to be sent to said base station can next attempt to transmit to said base station over said uplink channel, wherein said base station, on startup and upon receiving a transmission over said uplink channel from one of said at least two subscriber stations, places said uplink channel into a selected one of said modes for a next transmission over said uplink channel; wherein said associated downlink signaling channel also provides transmission power control information to a subscriber station transmitting on said uplink channel; wherein a transmitting subscriber station does not transmit payload data until it receives a selected amount of transmission power control information from said base station; wherein said selected amount of transmission power control data is a portion of a first transmission time slot; and wherein, when said uplink channel is in polled mode and a first subscriber station is selected to transmit for two or more contiguous transmission time slots, said first subscriber station transmits payload data for the entire time slot of each time slot it is selected for after said first time slot.