Patent ID: 7130668

Claim:
A method for controlling a sleep mode including sleep intervals and awake intervals in a broadband wireless access communication system having a base station and subscriber terminals, the method comprising the steps of: grouping first subscriber terminals, which request a sleep operation to the base station, into several groups for controlling the sleep mode; establishing each point of time for transmitting a paging message to each group different from each other within a unit time slot for controlling the sleep mode; and managing a sleep interval scheduling table, which manages sleep interval scheduling information of each first subscriber terminal, according to each group in response to a request for a state transition into the sleep mode of the first subscriber terminals, wherein the grouping step is performed with respect to the subscriber terminals in an order of requests of the subscriber terminals for the sleep operation to the base station such that each group includes a predetermined number of the first subscriber terminals and the number of the groups increases whenever the number of the first subscriber terminals exceeds the predetermined number.