Patent ID: 6920120

Claim:
A method of scheduling radio resources in a packet-switched wireless communications network, said method comprising the steps of: admitting a plurality of data packets from a plurality of users, each of said packets having an associated user with an allocated radio channel; placing the plurality of data packets in a First-In-First-Out (FIFO) queue having a plurality of packet positions in which the packet that has been in the queue for the longest time is in the first position; starting with the packet in the first position, sequentially selecting and analyzing each of the packets for transmission; transmitting a selected packet if the allocated radio channel associated with the selected packet has an instantaneous radio channel quality greater than a historical channel quality value; temporarily holding the selected packet in its position in the queue while analyzing a selected packet in the next position in the queue, if the allocated radio channel does not have an instantaneous radio channel quality greater than the historical channel quality value; and after a packet is transmitted, starting again with the packet in the first position and sequentially selecting and analyzing each of the packets for transmission.