Continuous synchronous encryption and decryption in a wireless communications system throughout handoffs.

Communication units (CU), portable and fixed (120, 102), maintain an encryption and decryption of information without interruption, through a transfer in a wireless communications system. CUs (120, 102) comprise encryption synchronization counters (ESC) (414, 314) and multi-access time division (TDMA) transceivers (402, 302), to send and receive a digital signal (201 ), which has a recurring synchronization marker (204). The CU (120, 102) keep the encryption and decryption synchronized by the transfer of a continuation value (419, 320) and a time (420, 318) to complete the transfer to a fixed CU (102) about the receiving a transfer, the continuation value comprising an expected value in the ESC (414) of the portable CU (120) is transferred at the time (420, 418) of completing the transfer. The ESCs (414, 314) through the system maintain frame synchronization through the synchronization marker (204) from the fixed CUs (120, 102).