Patent ID: 8472992

Claim:
In a base station having an air interface, a method comprising: during a nominal time interval equal to one frame, receiving a transmission on the air interface from an access terminal being served by the base station; upon completion of the nominal time interval, making a determination that the transmission has not been successfully decoded into a frame of data; and in response to making the determination, for each of successive additional time intervals during which a continued attempt to decode the transmission remains unsuccessful, incrementing a target power level for received transmissions from the access terminal, wherein the successive additional time intervals comprise a maximum number of successive additional time intervals for continued attempts to decode the transmission, wherein the target power level has a nominal value at completion of the nominal time interval and a maximum increased value at completion of the maximum number of successive additional time intervals, wherein a change from the nominal value at completion of the nominal time interval to the maximum increased value at completion of the maximum number of successive additional time intervals defines a power increment function as a function time, and wherein incrementing the target power level comprises increasing the target power level according to the power increment function.