Abstract: The power of a signal transmitted from a mobile terminal of a half-duplex TDMA communication system to a base station is controlled by collecting data relating to bit errors in the transmitted signal received on an inbound channel, generating a time-varying statistic of the data. If the time varying statistic indicates that the power should be adjusted, a power control command is embedded in one or more time slots of an outbound channel to the mobile terminal to change the power of the signal. The data may be the bit error rate (BER) reported by a forward error correction decoder and/or returned signal strength information (RSSI). The time varying statistic may be the moving average and standard deviation of the data.

Abstract: A subscriber unit (100) determines that there is information to transmit, and requests an amount of bandwidth. Upon receipt of the request for bandwidth from the subscriber unit, the fixed network equipment (FNE; 102) determines whether the requested bandwidth is available. If yes, the FNE dynamically determines at least a first timer value to be used by the subscriber unit to detect a loss of granted bandwidth, and transmits a reservation grant to the subscriber unit granting the request. The reservation grant comprises the at least first timer value. Upon receipt of the reservation grant, the subscriber unit extracts the at least first timer value from the reservation grant and uses the at least first timer value to detect loss of granted bandwidth.