Patent ID: 7453861

Claim:
A method for estimating interference power at a receiver in a wireless network communications system to select a transmission power between a transmitter and the receiver, comprising: at the receiver, determining a number of active interferers transmitting in for a first time slot to the receiver; at the receiver, measuring an interference power value for said first time slot; and at the receiver, estimating an interference power value for a second time slot and a number of active interferers for said second time slot by correlating said measured interference power value and said number of active interferers for a said first time slot; and selecting a transmission power for transmission between said transmitter and said receiver over said second time slot as a function of said estimated interference power and number of active interferers, wherein the wireless network communications system includes a plurality of receivers and a plurality of training sequences used in said network are stored at each of the plurality of receivers, and the method further comprises receiving at said receiver one of said training sequences transmitted to said receiver with a user signal; measuring at said receiver the received signal power associated with said transmission to said receiver according to said training sequences received at said receiver; and estimating the number of active interferers based on said received signal power.