Method and apparatus for header compression in a wireless communication system

DETAILED DESCRIPTION The word "exemplary" is used exclusively herein to mean "serving as an example, instance, or illustration.
" Any embodiment described herein as "exemplary" is not necessarily to be construed as preferred or advantageous over other embodiments.
Data compression is particularly applicable to a wireless communication system, as a critical resource is the available bandwidth.
The efficient use of available bandwidth impacts the performance and breadth of the system.
Toward that end, compression techniques have been applied to reduce the size of overhead information transmitted along with the data or content information.
For example, in a digital transmission, data is transmitted in frames.
The frames may be part of a packet of data, part of a data message, or continuous frames in a stream of information, such as audio and/or video streams.
Attached to each frame of data (and each packet or message) is a header containing processing information that allows the receiver to understand the information contained in the frame(s).
This header information is considered overhead, i.
e.
, processing information transmitted along with information content.
The information content is referred to as the payload.
While each individual header is typically much smaller than a given payload, the cumulative effect of transmitting headers impacts the available bandwidth.
An exemplary embodiment of a wireless communication system employs a method of header compression that reduces the size of each header while satisfying the accuracy and transmission requirements of the system.
The exemplary embodiment supports a unidirectional broadcast service.
The broadcast service provides video and/or audio streams to multiple users.
Subscribers to the broadcast service "tune in" to a designated channel to access the broadcast transmission.
As the bandwidth requirement for high speed transmission of video broadcasts is great, it is desirable to reduce the size of any overhead associated with such broadcast transmission