UEs can be embodied by any of a number of types of devices including but not limited to printed circuit (PC) cards, compact flash devices, external or internal modems, wireless or wireline phones, smartphones, tablets, tracking devices, asset tags, and so on. A communication link through which UEs can send signals to a RAN is called an uplink channel (e.g., a reverse traffic channel, a reverse control channel, an access channel, etc.). A communication link through which the RAN can send signals to UEs is called a downlink or forward link channel (e.g., a paging channel, a control channel, a broadcast channel, a forward traffic channel, etc.). As used herein the term traffic channel (TCH) can refer to either an uplink/reverse or downlink/forward traffic channel.
FIG. 1A illustrates a high-level system architecture of a wireless communications system 100 in accordance with an aspect of the disclosure. The wireless communications system 100 contains UEs 1 to N (referenced as 102-1 to 102-N). The UEs 102-1 to 102-N can include cellular telephones, personal digital assistant (PDAs), pagers, a laptop computer, a tablet computer, a desktop computer, and so on. For example, in FIG. 1A, UE 102-1 and UE 102-2 are illustrated as cellular feature phones, UEs 102-3, 102-4, and 102-5 are illustrated as cellular touchscreen phones, or “smartphones,” and UE 102-N is illustrated as a desktop computer, or personal computer (often referred to as a “PC”). Although only six UEs 102 are shown in FIG. 1A, the number of UEs 102 in wireless communications system 100 may be in the hundreds, thousands, or millions (e.g., N may be any number up to or greater than one million).