Wireless communications methods and apparatus employing paging attribute descriptors

A method of communicating in a wireless communications system that is operative to communicate over a physical channel defined as a series of repeating time slots, the method comprising the steps of:

• transmitting a paging attribute descriptor (PAD) in at least one of a first time slot of the physical channel and a second time slot of the physical channel succeeding the first time slot, the PAD indicating content of a page message;
• transmitting the page message in the second time slot;
• recovering the PAD at a wireless station;
• and
• determining whether to recover the page message based on the recovered PAD;
• wherein said step of transmitting a PAD comprises the step of transmitting a PAD coded according to a first predetermined code;
• wherein said step of recovering the PAD comprises the steps of:
• receiving a signal at the wireless station;
• and
• processing the received signal to generate data corresponding to the coded PAD;
• and
• wherein the method further comprises the steps of:
• decoding the generated data according to the first predetermined code to generate an estimate of the transmitted PAD;
• generating an error estimate for the generated estimate of the transmitted PAD;
• and
• determining link quality from the generated error estimate.

A method of operating a wireless station, the method comprising the steps of:

• recovering a transmitted paging attribute descriptor (PAD) from at least one of a first time slot of a physical channel defined as a series of repeating time slots and a second time slot of the physical channel succeeding the first time slot, the PAD indicating content of a page message transmitted in the second time slot;
• and
• determining whether to recover the page message based on the recovered PAD;
• wherein said step of recovering a transmitted PAD comprises the steps of:
• receiving a first signal burst representing a physical layer message that includes the PAD at an end portion thereof;
• and
• demodulating the received first signal burst to an extent sufficient to recover the PAD without demodulating the entire first signal burst.

A method of operating a wireless station, the method comprising the steps of:

• recovering a transmitted paging attribute descriptor (PAD) from at least one of a first time slot of a physical channel defined as a series of repeating time slots and a second time slot of the physical channel succeeding the first time slot, the PAD indicating content of a page message transmitted in the second time slot;
• and
• determining whether to recover the page message based on the recovered PAD;
• wherein said step of recovering a transmitted PAD comprises the steps of:
• receiving a signal at the wireless station;
• and
• processing the received signal to generate data corresponding to the PAD;
• and
• wherein the method further comprises the steps of:
• decoding the generated data according to a first predetermined code to generate an estimate of the transmitted PAD;
• generating an error estimate for the generated estimate of the transmitted PAD;
• and
• determining link quality from the generated error estimate.