Patent ID: 7907907

Claim:
A method to select a transmission scheme for a radio frequency (RF) burst between a servicing base station and individual wireless terminals in a cellular wireless communication system, the method comprising: implementing a first transmission scheme between the servicing base station and the wireless terminal; receiving a first downlink quality report corresponding to the first transmission scheme at the servicing base station from the wireless terminal that includes a bit error probability (BEP) for the RF burst, wherein the wireless terminal determines the BEP based on: an estimated BEP derived from the SNR of the RF burst when the data within the RF burst is unsuccessfully decoded; and at least the estimated BEP and a re-encoded bit error rate (RBER) when the data within the RF burst is successfully decoded; comparing the first downlink quality report corresponding to the first transmission scheme to at least one link adaptation threshold for individual wireless terminals; and implementing an alternative transmission scheme between the servicing base station and the wireless terminal when the first downlink quality report compares unfavorably to the at least one link adaptation threshold, and wherein the alternative transmission scheme is expected to result in an expected quality report being improved over the first downlink quality report.