APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR COMMUNICATING USER EQUIPMENT SPECIFIC INFORMATION IN CELLULAR COMMUNICATION SYSTEM

摘要

A cellular communication system comprises a base station (101) and a plurality of user equipment (103). The base station (101) comprises a combine processor (111) which combines user equipment specific information, such as power control commands or synchronisation information, for a plurality of user equipment (103). An encode processor (113) encodes the combined user equipment specific information and a transceiver (109) transmits the combined user equipment specific information in a minimum transmission resource unit of the cellular communication system. The minimum transmission resource unit may be a single channelisation code in a single time slot. The UE (103) comprises a receiver (115) for receiving the minimum transmission resource unit and a UE data processor (117) which decodes the minimum transmission resource unit and extracts the user equipment specific information for that UE (103). The invention may provide a more efficient communication of small data blocks.