The present invention relates to an improved wireless communications system capable
of efficiently transmitting smaller-sized data packets (e.g. 10 to 20 byte length)
that are frequently delivered (e.g. every 10 to 20 msec.) to mobile nodes on the
communications system, such as voice communications. Because an uncompressed TCP/IP
or UDP/IP header length is disproportionally large compared to the smaller-sized
data packets, the bandwidth on the backhaul connection between the base station
controller unit (BSC) and the base transceiver station (BTS) is not being utilized
as efficiently as possible. The present invention optimizes the transmission of
information packets on the backhaul connection by using an IP Adaptation Layer
(IPAL) protocol to map the user connections, eliminate the large header on information
packets having smaller-sized data packet sizes, and concatenating the data packets
into an IPAL information packet for tunneling on the backhaul connection. In this
manner, the present invention more efficiently uses the available bandwidth on
the backhaul connection by selectively reducing the overhead (e.g. headers) of
the information packet transmission.
