Scheduling of measurement occasions of a mobile terminal

1. A method of downlink operation in a communication system having a network controller, a base station and a terminal, the method comprising:

scheduling a first communication channel by the base station for communication with the base station;

scheduling a second communication channel by the network controller for communication with the network controller;

monitoring the first communication channel at the terminal at predetermined times known to the terminal and the network controller; and

signaling, from the network controller to the base station using the second communication channel, information relating to the predetermined times so that the base station has awareness of the terminal, said information further relating to measurement occasions of the terminal.

2. A method according to claim 1 , wherein the communication system is in a state where there is no active communication between the terminal and the base station.

3. A method according to claim 1 , wherein the second communication channel scheduled by the network controller has a longer transmit time interval than the first communication channel scheduled by the base station.

4. A method according to claim 1 , wherein the downlink is a universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) terrestrial radio access (UTRA) frequency division duplex (FDD) high speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) transmission.

5. A method according to claim 1 , wherein the terminal is in a cell forward access channel (Cell_FACH) state.

6. A method according to claim 5 , wherein forward access channel (FACH) content is mapped onto a high speed physical downlink shared channel (HS-PDSCH), or onto a high speed downlink shared channel (HS-DSCH).

7. A method according to claim 1 , wherein the network controller is a radio network controller.

8. A method according to claim 1 , wherein the base station is a Node B.

9. A method according to claim 1 , wherein the predetermined times are measurement occasions for the terminal.

10. A method according to claim 9 , wherein, if a repeat transmission with an existing setting was interrupted by the measurement occasion, the measurement occasion is resumed without further signaling and with the existing setting directly after termination of the measurement occasion.

11. A method according to claim 10 , wherein the terminal decides whether to receive the repeat transmission after interruption based on whether the repeat transmission before interruption was sufficient.

12. A method according to claim 1 , wherein the signaling includes information on a relationship of secondary common control physical channel (S-CCPCH) transmit time interval (TTI) length and measurement occasions.

13. A method according to claim 12 , wherein a plurality of S-CCPCHs are provided by network controller, and the S-CCPCH having the smallest transmit time interval (TTI) length is used as a reference for calculating a length of the measurement occasions.

14. A method according to claim 12 , wherein the S-CCPCH using a left most or right most code of an orthogonal variable spreading factor (OVSF) code tree is used as a reference for calculating a length of the measurement occasions.

15. A method according to claim 1 , wherein the terminal has two operating states, one of which includes occasions at which the terminal retunes, the occasions occur periodically according to a timing, and the timing of the occasions is signaled from the network controller to the base station.

16. A method according to claim 1 , wherein the signaling includes a cell radio network temporary identifier.