Error handling for named signal events in wireless communications

The present invention provides a technique for handling damaged named signal event (NSE) packets that are received in association with a voice over packet based telephony call. The received packets for a telephony call may include voice packets as well as NSE packets. Upon receipt of the packets at a physical layer, the packets are processed at a link layer to detect damaged packets having link layer errors. The incoming packets are sent to an audio application at an application layer for further processing. For damaged packets, link layer error indicia is generated at the link layer and sent to the audio processing application. The audio application will use the link layer error indicia to identify damaged packets or payloads associated with damaged packets, and determine whether the payloads corresponding to the damaged packets include NSE information defining an NSE. Damaged NSE packets are processed accordingly.