Patent ID: 8185138

Claim:
A method of scheduling paging messages in a wireless communications system, comprising: negotiating paging parameters for a paging group of mobile stations in idle mode, wherein the paging parameters comprise a common listening interval for the mobile stations in the paging group; receiving paging messages targeting the mobile stations in the paging group; grouping the mobile stations in the paging group into a number of sub-groups; determining an order for transmitting the paging messages within the common listening interval, wherein the order specifies a sequential order for transmitting the paging messages targeting the mobile stations in different sub-groups of the paging group, wherein the determining the order for transmitting the paging messages within the common listening interval comprises: determining a sub-group associated with said each paging message based on a MAC address hash value generated from a MAC address of a targeted mobile station, and determining an order of the sub-group based on a remainder of a quotient of a sum of the MAC address hash value of the targeted mobile station and an index of the common listening interval divided by the number of sub-groups; and transmitting the paging messages, by sub-group, in the determined order using a base station.