FIELD: radio engineering, communication.
SUBSTANCE: PDCAB packet (300) and a RRA packet (308) are transmitted together on the F-SCCH. For example, 9 RRA bits (305) are attached to the PDCAB field (303), in place of the pad bits (205), thereby allowing both the PDCAB (303) and RRA (311) messages to be protected from errors by a 16-bit CRC (307). A receiver is able to distinguish between the varying PDCAB (303) and RRA (305) message formats and transmitting the packets (300) and (308) together is a normal mode of operation. Therefore, when the PDCAB packet (300) and RRA packet (308) are transmitted together, the network replaces the N PDCAB pad bits, such as pad bits (205), with the first N bits from the RRA bitmap (311), in order to use the nominal CRC length for both packets (300) and (308).
EFFECT: improved use of bandwidth consumed by transmission of bits so that a longer CRC can be applied with respect to control channel information.
11 cl, 8 dwg
