description a wireless telephone system that reduces the time the phone receiver is on and therefore reduces the time that power is being drawn is desirable in the advanced mobile phone system 39 s amps standby mode the receiver 39 s primary function is to listen to the forward overhead control channel focc an focc word is formed by encoding 28 information bits and 12 bits of parity into a 40 bit codeword each codeword is alternately repeated five times a b a b a b a b a b so that the receiver can perform three out of five majority voting upon decoding the data the repetition provides redundancy against radio channel distortion such as fades in amplitude and impulsive noise the inventor noticed that the receiver often can avoid having to listen to all five words by taking advantage of certain system properties for example if all of the first three words are decoded identically the three out of five voting is complete and the receiver could go to u201c sleep u201d for the remaining two words further there are conditions for returning to u201c sleep u201d after reception of only one or two words when a base station has no other messages to send it sends what are known as u201c control filler u201d messages this condition can occur more than 50 of the time the receiver compares the first and or second word properties of the previous control filler message and if they match.