Abstract: By using portions of their reverse pilot signals, mobile stations report relevant state information to supporting radio base stations (RBSs) such that reverse link scheduling decisions may be made quickly at the RBS level rather than by an associated base station controller. Moving reverse link scheduling to the RBS level greatly increases the speed of scheduling decisions, such that a wireless network gains efficiency through greater scheduling responsiveness. In exemplary embodiments, “pilot stealing” for state information transmission is balanced against the network's need for unmodulated pilot signals from the mobile stations to use in channel estimation operations and carrier synchronization. “Stolen” portions of a given mobile station's pilot signal may be used to indicate that, for example, the mobile station has data to send, and that it can increase its reverse data rate.