Patent ID: 7751372

Claim:
In a duplex radio link wherein a local terminal and a remote terminal each transmits digital data information along with jointly-known reference data over a plurality of fading dispersive channels, that include a plurality of transmit diversity channels, producing local and remote received signals at the respective terminals and wherein at the local terminal the digital data information is generated from a data interface in the form of data packets, a method of operating the local and remote terminals comprising the steps of: modulating at the local terminal, for transmission on respective transmit diversity channels at a constant symbol rate and over a predetermined constant data rate interval, independent digital data information and the jointly-known reference data, in accordance with a selected respective data rate mode that is a function of direct sequence spreading gain, error correction code rate, and signal constellation type; calculating at the remote terminal from the jointly-known reference data and the remote received signals a link quality measure; transmitting at the remote terminal a feedback message containing the link quality measure; recovering at the local terminal from the local received signals the link quality measure contained in the feedback message transmitted from the remote terminal; controlling at the local terminal an arrival rate from the data interface of data packets as a function of the link quality measure and the current data packet arrival rate; selecting at the local terminal the respective data rate mode for the next constant data rate interval as a function of the data packet arrival rate and the link quality measure.