Synchronizing radio telephone to receive every nth overhead message train

Abstract

A method for operating a cellular communications network includes the steps of (a) providing a set of mobile stations that are capable of operating in an idle/sleep mode of operation; (b) transmitting a forward control channel to the set of mobile stations, the forward control channel being organized as a frame structure that is continuously repeated, wherein each frame structure includes an overhead information portion and a plurality of paging information portions; and (c) operating the set of mobile stations to all receive the overhead information portion from every nth frame structure and to receive an assigned one of the paging information portions from every frame structure, wherein n is an integer that is greater than one. The value of n may be fixed or may be made variable. In a presently preferred embodiment of this invention n is equal to six. The method further includes a step of placing individual ones of the set of mobile stations into a low power mode of operation when not receiving the overhead information and paging information portions. In a presently preferred embodiment of this invention the overhead information portion includes at least a system parameter overhead message and may include other overhead messages.