Method and system for providing notifications of system information changes on a per cycle basis

A method for broadcasting tag values indicating whether system information has changed, the broadcasting occurring over an air interface from a base station to wireless communication devices (WCDs), the air interface defining a continuum of radio frames, each radio frame containing a tag value, wherein the WCDs are arranged to read the tag value from every 16th frame to determine whether system information has changed, the method comprising, for each of a plurality of radio frames of the continuum:

• making a determination of whether system information has changed since 16 radio frames earlier in the continuum;
• if the determination is that system information has changed since 16 radio frames earlier in the continuum, then broadcasting in the radio frame a tag value indicating that system information has changed;
• and
• if the determination is that system information has not changed since 16 radio frames earlier in the continuum, then broadcasting in the radio frame a tag value indicating that system information has not changed.

A base station for use in a cellular wireless communication system, the base station comprising:

• an antenna arrangement for radiating to define a coverage area in which to communicate to wireless communication devices (WCDs), the coverage area supporting a plurality of wakeup cycles each respectively defining periodically recurring time units, wherein the wakeup cycles are the same duration as each other but are not aligned in time with each other;
• a processing unit;
• data storage;
• and
• program instructions stored in the data storage and executable by the processing unit to carry out functions comprising:
• monitoring, separately for each wakeup cycle of the plurality of wakeup cycles that are the same duration as each other but are not aligned in time with each other, variation in system information occurring between time units of the wakeup cycle;
• and
• broadcasting via the antenna arrangement, respectively in a next time unit of each wakeup cycle, an indication of whether system information has changed since a latest time unit of the wakeup cycle, wherein the indication is based on the monitoring carried out separately for the wakeup cycle.