TRANSMISSION OF COMFORT NOISE PARAMETERS DURING DISCONTINUOUS TRANSMISSION

A comfort noise block, that include a hangover period and comfort noise parameters, is transmitted in such a manner that it is not interrupted by other messages, such as FACCH messages. This is accomplished in a mobile station by a determination of whether any FACCH messages are required to be transmitted. If such FACCH messages exist, a further determination may be made as to which transmission can be made in the shortest time (i.e., the FACCH message or messages or the comfort noise parameters message), and this transmission is made first. In any event the comfort noise parameters block is transmitted without interruption. In a further embodiment of this invention the comfort noise parameters message is transmitted by being concatenated with another message, such as a neighbor channel measurement results message, so as to reduce overhead, conserve bandwidth, and reduce power consumption. An element of the comfort noise parameters message is a Random Excitation Spectral Control (RESC) information element, which is used in the decoder for improving the spectral content of the generated comfort noise so as to better match the background noise at the transmitter.