Patent ID: 8923198

Claim:
A user terminal for a wireless communications system, the user terminal comprising: at least two antennas for the reception and/or transmission of traffic from a higher node in the system, the user terminal being arranged to receive said traffic in one or more data streams with a rank of one or higher, on a predefined channel; a control unit arranged to choose with which rank the higher node should transmit the traffic to the user terminal on said predefined channel, and to also signal this choice to the higher node in the system, the control unit of the user terminal being arranged to base its choice of rank on the following: the estimated received data rate at the user terminal for different transmission ranks, wherein the user terminal is arranged to estimate the received data for different transmission ranks by monitoring the utilization/congestion of a downlink channel, and to use a degree of utilization above a certain threshold as an indication to choose a higher rank, the estimated power consumption in the user terminal for different transmission ranks, and the Signal to Noise ratio, (SNR) of the channel at the user terminal.