Patent ID: 8630269

Claim:
A method for jointly adapting power and data transmission rate in a wideband code division multiple access wireless network, comprising: determining for a wireless base station of the network a spreading code adjustment based on an average link quality of at least one previous uplink frame; determining for the wireless base station a transmit power adjustment based on a link quality of at least one time slot of a current uplink frame; transmitting from the wireless base station a downlink frame having a time slot, the time slot of the downlink frame comprising a downlink physical data channel portion carrying payload data and a downlink physical control channel portion, the downlink physical control channel portion including: a transmit power control portion containing information based on the transmit power adjustment; and a transmit format combination indicator portion containing information based on the spreading code adjustment; and wherein determining the transmit power adjustment based on the link quality of at least one time slot of a current uplink frame further comprises: stepping a rate adaption counter value based on a comparison of the average link quality with a predetermined link quality threshold; and comparing the rate adaption counter value with upper and lower rate adaption counter thresholds.