SCHEDULING OF SIGNALING MESSAGES IN A WIRELESS TDMA-BASED COMMUNICATION SYSTEM

A wireless communication system (200) supporting packet data communications in a timeslot-based operational procedure, the communication system comprising a network processor for transmitting communications to and/or receiving communications from one or more remote communication terminals (212, 214), wherein the network processor (236, 248) comprises generation means for generating signalling messages to be sent to target remote communication terminals and a scheduler (255) for scheduling sending of the signalling messages to target remote communication terminals, characterised in that the scheduler (255) is operable to receive a plurality of signalling messages from the generation means and to control timing of sending of the signalling messages whereby one or more of the timeslots of the operational procedure incorporate two or more of the signalling messages. The invention enables short signalling messages, for example end-of-data messages, to be sent to a number of remote communication units, for example mobile stations, by sending two or more of the messages within the same timeslots. This provides the advantage that the number of timeslots used for control signalling will decrease, thereby increasing the number of timeslots available for data payload transfer thereby improving the speed and throughput of data payload. The system may be a TETRA system.