RADIO INTERFACE COMMON RECONFIGURATION

1 . A method of requesting a radio interface common reconfiguration to be made by each of a group of user equipment from within a plurality of user equipment being supported by a base station in a multi-carrier wireless communications system, the method comprising:

determining said radio interface common reconfiguration to be made by each of said group of user equipment;

encoding said radio interface common reconfiguration in a payload field of an high speed shared control channel (HS-SCCH) order;

encoding, in said HS-SCCH order, an indication associating said HS-SCCH order with said group of user equipment; and

transmitting said HS-SCCH order to said plurality of user equipment being supported by said base station.

2 . The method of claim 1 , wherein said group of user equipment are in a cell dedicated channel (Cell_DCH) state and said radio interface common reconfiguration comprises at least one of activating at least one carrier, deactivating at least one carrier, changing primary carrier, changing of serving cell, change between normal transmission and discontinuous transmission, and change between normal reception and discontinuous reception.

3 . The method of claim 1 , wherein said encoding said indication comprises:

appending a modified cyclic redundancy check field to said HS-SCCH order, said modified cyclic redundancy check field being derived from at least one field of said HS-SCCH order and an identifier common to said group of user equipment.

4 . The method of claim 1 , wherein said encoding said indication comprises:

appending a modified header field to said HS-SCCH order, said modified header field encoding an identifier common to said group of user equipment.

5 . The method of claim 1 , wherein said encoding said indication comprises:

appending a modified header field to said HS-SCCH order, said modified header field encoding an indicator that said HS-SCCH order is intended for a group of user equipment.

6 . The method of claim 1 , wherein said encoding said indication comprises:

appending a modified header field to said HS-SCCH order, said modified header field encoding a group indicator representative of an identifier common to said group of user equipment.

7 . The method of claim 1 , comprising:

determining a quantity of user equipment being supported by said base station requiring said radio interface common reconfiguration and encoding and transmitting a plurality of said HS-SCCH orders, each of said plurality of said HS-SCCH orders being receivable by an associated group of user equipment have a size less than a predetermined maximum.

8 . The method of claim 1 , wherein said transmitting comprises:

at least one of transmitting said HS-SCCH order with a power level set for that user equipment within said group having a lowest signal reception level and transmitting said HS-SCCH order on a plurality of carriers.

9 . The method of claim 1 , comprising:

monitoring for acknowledgement messages from each of said group of user equipment; and

at least one of retransmitting said HS-SCCH order and transmitting a plurality of HS-SCCH orders, each of said plurality of HS-SCCH orders being encoded for one of said group of user equipment which failed to transmit an acknowledgement message.

10 . A base station operable to request a radio interface common reconfiguration to be made by each of a group of user equipment from within a plurality of user equipment being supported by said base station, the base station comprising:

determination logic operable to determine said radio interface common reconfiguration to be made by each of said group of user equipment;

encoding logic operable to encode said radio interface common reconfiguration in a payload field of an HS-SCCH order and to encode, in said HS-SCCH order, an indication associating said HS-SCCH order with said group of user equipment; and

transmission logic operable to transmit said HS-SCCH order to said plurality of user equipment being supported by said base station.

11 . A method of performing a radio interface common reconfiguration in user equipment in response a request from a supporting a base station, the method comprising:

receiving an HS-SCCH order from said base station;

decoding an indication in said HS-SCCH order associating said HS-SCCH order with a group of user equipment;

determining whether said indication matches a group with which said user equipment is associated; and

if a match occurs, decoding said radio interface common reconfiguration in said HS-SCCH order and performing said radio interface common reconfiguration.

12 . The method of claim 11 , wherein said decoding and determining comprises extracting a cyclic redundancy check field from said HS-SCCH order and performing a cyclic redundancy check using an identifier common to said group of user equipment.

13 . The method of claim 11 , wherein said decoding and determining comprises identifying said indication in a header field of said HS-SCCH order indicating a group of user equipment with which said HS-SCCH order is associated.

14 . The method of claim 11 , wherein said decoding and determining comprises identifying an indicator in a header field of said HS-SCCH order indicating that said HS-SCCH order is associated with a group of user equipment, extracting a cyclic redundancy check field from said HS-SCCH order and performing a cyclic redundancy check using an identifier common to said group of user equipment.

15 . User equipment operable to perform a radio interface common reconfiguration in response a request from a supporting a base station, the user equipment comprising:

reception logic operable to receive an HS-SCCH order from said base station;

decoding logic operable to decode an indication in said HS-SCCH order associating said HS-SCCH order with a group of user equipment;

determining logic operable to determine whether said indication matches a group with which said user equipment is associated; and

reconfiguration logic operable, in response to an indication from said determining logic that a match occurs, to decode said radio interface common reconfiguration in said HS-SCCH order and to perform said radio interface common reconfiguration.