Transmissions on the dedicated channel are encoded using a set of paramaters that are picked from a large selection of potential parameters. If the remote station does not know the particular set of parameters that were used by a base station, then the remote station would have to attempt to decode the transmission using every set of parameters, until the transmission is decoded correctly. This is an inefficient methodology. Hence, transmission format information is typically transmitted on a broadcast channel so that a remote station could receive the transmission format information. However, the broadcast channel has reliability problems. New methods and apparatus are presented to allow a base station to determine an overlapping set of Walsh code sequences that can be used to send the transmission format information on the dedicated channel, rather than a broadcast channel. Using the overlapping set allows the remote station to decode the information.