MECHANISM FOR MAXIMIZING UPLINK BANDWIDTH BY OVERLAPPING CONTROL REGIONS IN WIMAX SYSTEM

摘要

A method and system for allocating a particular uplink control region to both HARQ ACKCH and CQICH in order to maximize uplink bandwidth for data transfer in a communication network. A control region scheduling (CRS) utility assigns a higher priority to HARQ ACKCH relative to CQICH. When both HARQ ACKCH and CQICH are to be allocated for a subscriber in the same region in the same frame, HARQ ACKCH is allocated in the region while CQICH is rejected. As the substitute to the rejected CQICH, the CRS utility may use current uplink channel quality information in combination with the corresponding HARQ ACK transmission to estimate the downlink channel quality information for the subscriber. Upon receiving the HARQ ACK information, the CRS utility updates the subscriber(s) uplink channel quality information. The CRS utility also provides a configurable option of activating or de-activating the sharing of the uplink control region.