Patent ID: 8340046

Claim:
A base station, comprising: a transmitter operable to transmit a persistent assignment to a mobile station, the persistent assignment including an indication of a time-frequency resource assignment for the mobile station and being associated with a plurality of hybrid automatic repeat request (H-ARQ) channel identifiers (ACIDs); and wherein the resource assignment repeats at a first periodic interval, and each of the plurality of ACIDs repeats at a second periodic interval; wherein the persistent assignment comprises a Start ACID field and a Number of ACID field, the Start ACID field indicating the starting ACID for a series of packets, and the Number of ACID field indicates the number of ACIDs associated with the persistent assignment; and wherein an ACID value increments after the first periodic interval, each of the ACID values repeating after the second periodic interval, the second periodic interval being determined at least in part on the value of the Number of ACID field.