There is provided a method for allocating a mobile station to an available resource slot of a plurality of resource slots within a stream of data frames, the stream of data frames broadcasted to the mobile station by a base station. The method includes scanning resource slots to identify an available resource slot, the available resource slot available for assignment to a resource, wherein the resource slots are included in all of the data frames in the stream of data frames, the scanning further including retrieving a data structure of the available resource slot, the data structure having nodes, the nodes associated with different periodicities and different offsets of the periodicities. The method also includes assigning the mobile station to one of the nodes of the available resource slot with an associated periodicity and an associated offset of the periodicity.