Efficient message transmission in a mobile communication system

A communications system for communicating with mobile radio units comprising:

• plural base stations, each base station including plural radio transceivers and a common controller assigning radio channels to ones of the radio transceivers;
• and
• a control node coupled to the base stations and controlling communications involving the mobile radio units,
• wherein the control node transmits a message to a base station, the message identifying a first set of plural radio channels that may include less than a total number of radio channels associated with the base station and includes a messaging type field and an identification of a selected number of sectors,
• wherein the common controller in the base station selectively distributes the message for transmission only over each of the identified plural radio channels in the first set,
• wherein the base station services plural sectors having corresponding sector antennas, each sector sharing the plural radio transceivers and being controlled by the common controller, and
• wherein the common controller causes the message to be transmitted over a radio channel assigned to each selected sector.

A communications system for communicating with mobile radio units comprising:

• plural base stations, each base station including plural radio transceivers and a common controller assigning radio channels to ones of the radio transceivers;
• and
• a control node coupled to the base stations and controlling communications involving the mobile radio units,
• wherein the control node transmits a message to a base station, the message identifying a first set of plural radio channels that may include less than a total number of radio channels associated with the base station and includes a messaging type field and an identification of a selected number of cells,
• wherein the common controller in the base station selectively distributes the message for transmission only over each of the identified plural radio channels in the first set,
• wherein the selected base station services plural cells having corresponding cell antennas, each cell sharing the plural radio transceivers and being controlled by the common controller, and
• wherein the common controller causes the message to be transmitted over a radio channel assigned to each selected cell.

A communications system for communicating with mobile radio units comprising:

• plural base stations, each base station including plural radio transceivers and a common controller coordinating channel assignments with ones of the transceivers;
• at least one of the base stations including plural sector cells having corresponding sector cell antennas, the common controller of the one base station assigning a control channel for each sector cell to one of the base station's transceivers;
• a switching controller coupled to the base stations and controlling handling of communications involving the mobile communications units,
• wherein the switching controller transmits a single paging command to selected base stations including the one base station, the single paging command identifying control channels associated with a selected number of sector cells of the one base station, wherein the selected number may be less than a total number of sector cells of the one base station, and wherein the single paging command includes a message type field and an identification of the selected number of sector cell channels.

A communications system for communicating with mobile radio units comprising:

• plural base stations, each base station including plural radio transceivers and a common controller coordinating channel assignments with ones of the transceivers;
• at least one of the base stations including plural sector cells having corresponding sector cell antennas, the common controller of the one base station assigning a control channel for each sector cell to one of the base station's transceivers;
• a switching controller coupled to the base stations and controlling handling of communications involving the mobile communications units,
• wherein the switching controller transmits a single paging command to selected base stations including the one base station, the single paging command identifying control channels associated with a selected number of sector cells of the one base station, wherein the selected number may be less than a total number of sector cells of the one base station, wherein the single paging command includes a message type field and a multicasting transmission type field.

In a mobile communications network, a method of reducing signaling between a network control node and plural base stations comprising the steps of:

• establishing a common controller for each base station that controls allocation of communication resources associated with radio communications with mobile communication units;
• sending a message including a message type filed and a multicasting transmission type field from the network control node to at least one of the base stations including information that identifies plural communication resources at the one base station;
• multicasting the message to only selected ones of the plural communication resources at the one base station;
• and
• transmitting the multicast message using the selected communications resources.