A base station is provided. The base station includes a transmit path circuitry that generates a masking sequence to mask a cyclic redundancy check of a control channel information element. The masking sequence includes a 4-bit prefix. The three least significant bits of the 4-bit prefix indicate a message type of the control channel information element. A subscriber station is also provided. The subscriber station includes a receive path circuitry that determines a message type of a control channel information element using a three least significant bits of a 4-bit prefix of a masking sequence used to mask a cyclic redundancy check of the control channel information element.