Patent ID: 8599799

Claim:
A method of assigning resources in a multiple access communication system, comprising: determining which of a plurality of resources, selected from a generated map of unutilized conditionally assigned resources, not being currently utilized by a user and subject to conditional assignments are to be utilized by at least one conditional user, wherein the user is assigned a persistent assignment of the plurality of resources, wherein the plurality of resources have persistent assignments spanning multiple communications to one or more access terminals and are subject to conditional assignments to the at least one conditional user based on a determination of a gap in transmission of the one or more access terminals; generating a signal indicative of one or more conditional resources from the plurality of resources that are to be utilized by the at least one conditional user; and transmitting the signal to at least the conditional user, wherein the one or more conditional resources are one or more traffic channels and one or more ACK (acknowledgement) resources assigned to the one or more traffic channels signaled to the at least one conditional user, wherein the traffic channels are idle during the persistent assignment, wherein at least one of the traffic channels is a larger traffic channel corresponding to a node above a lowest tier of a channel tree and the ACK resources comprise at least a subset of ACK resources assigned to base traffic channels under the larger traffic channel.