Patent ID: 8416881

Claim:
A method for determining an effective signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (ESINR) associated with transmission of a plurality of modulation symbols at a plurality of different modulation orders comprising: determining a signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SNR) bit factor (SBF) for each of Q number of bits per symbol associated with a first modulation order based on the SNR associated with a base symbol associated with a base modulation order; determining a SBF for each of P number of bits per symbol associated with a second modulation order based on the SNR associated with the base symbol, wherein the first modulation order is different from the second modulation order; and determining an ESINR for a first modulation symbol associated with the first modulation order and a second modulation symbol associated with the second modulation order based on: a first SNR associated with the first modulation symbol, a second SNR associated with the second modulation symbol, and the SBF associated with each of the Q plus P number of bits per symbol; wherein determining the ESINR comprises determining the ESINR substantially in accordance with the following equation: E ⁢ ⁢ SIN ⁢ ⁢ R = - ln ⁡ ( 1 N ⁢ ∑ k = 1 L ⁢ ∑ b = 1 M k ⁢ ⅇ - SBF k , b ⁢ γ k ) , wherein N is a total of the Q number of bits per symbol plus the P number of bits per symbol, L is a total number of modulation symbols for which an ESINR is being determined, M k is a number of bits in a respective modulation symbol L, γ k is the SNR associated with a respective modulation symbol L associated with a respective bit N, and SBF is the SBF associated with the respective bit N of the respective modulation symbol L.