Method of estimating a current channel condition in a wireless communications network

• US 20060270432A1
• Filed: 05/31/2005
• Published: 11/30/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 05/31/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: RPX Corporation
• Original Assignee: Alcatel-Lucent SA (Nokia Corporation)
• Inventors: Dominique, Francis, Nabhane, Walid E., Kong, Hongwel
• Granted Patent: US 8,965,440 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 455/522
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/0001 Systems modifying transmission characteristics according to link quality, e.g. power backoff adaptive data allocation for multicarrier modulation H04L5/0044; controlling transmission power for radio systems H04W52/04
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/1671 the supervisory signal being transmitted together with control information
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/1812 Hybrid protocols; Hybrid automatic repeat request [HARQ]
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 52/58 Format of the TPC bits

Abstract

In the method, a current channel condition is estimated based at least in part on a previous channel quality indicator and power control information received after the previous channel quality indicator.

Claims

1. A method of estimating a current channel condition, comprising:

estimating a current channel quality based on a previous channel quality indicator and power control information received after the previous channel quality indicator.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the power control information indicates whether to increase or decrease a transmission power.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the increase or decrease to the transmission power is based on a given increment amount.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein the power control information includes at least one transmit power control bit.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the increase or decrease to the transmission power is based on a given increment amount.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the previous channel quality indicator is a latest received channel quality indicator before the estimating step.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the estimating step further comprises:

determining whether to use the power control information in estimating the current channel quality based on at least one of a communication status of a mobile station and a channel indicator.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the communication status is whether or not the mobile station is engaged in a soft handoff.

9. The method of claim 7, wherein the channel indicator includes an uplink channel quality.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the determining step determines not to use the power control information based on whether the mobile station is engaged in soft handoff and the uplink channel quality.

11. The method of claim 7, wherein the determining step does not use the power control information if the mobile station is engaged in soft handoff.

12. The method of claim 7, wherein the determining step uses the power control information if the mobile station is not engaged in soft handoff.

13. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

adjusting a downlink transmission parameter on a downlink channel based on the estimated current channel quality.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the downlink transmission parameter includes a downlink transmission power and the adjusting step increases or decreases the downlink transmission power on the downlink channel.

15. The method of claim 13, wherein the downlink transmission parameter includes a data encoding parameter and the adjustment step increases or decreases the level of encoding on the downlink channel.

16. The method of claim 13, wherein the down channel includes at least one of a High Speed Downlink Shared Channel and a High Speed Physical Downlink Shared Channel.

17. The method of claim 1, wherein the previous channel quality indicator is received on an uplink channel.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein the uplink channel is a High Speed Dedicated Physical Control Channel in accordance with 3GPP-UMTS.

19. The method of claim 1, wherein the power control information is received on an uplink channel.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein the uplink channel is a Dedicated Physical Control Channel.