Patent ID: 7609652

Claim:
An apparatus for controlling an operation of a plurality of communication layers in a layered communication system, the layered communication system transmitting information through a communication channel from a base station to a plurality of user devices, wherein the information comprises a first information associated with a first user device and a second information associated with a second user device in a multi-user scenario, wherein an operation of a first communication layer of the plurality of communication layers is determined by a first set of parameters, and wherein an operation of a second communication layer, distinct from said first communication layer, of the plurality of communication layers is determined by a second set of parameters, wherein the first communication layer is operative for encoding the first information to obtain a first information signal and for encoding the second information to obtain a second information signal, and wherein the second communication layer is operative for encoding the first information signal and the second information signal to obtain a composite signal to be transmitted through the communication channel, the apparatus comprising: a provider for providing a property of the communication channel; a storage element comprising a plurality of jointly optimized sets of parameters, being optimized across the first communication layer and the second communication layer, to be used in different scenarios, each scenario being defined by a predefined transmission quality for the first and second information and by a predefined communication channel property selected from the group comprising a bit error probability or/and a transmission delay or/and a transmission power associated with the bit error probability, or/and a channel coherence time or/and a channel coherence bandwidth, wherein each jointly optimized set of parameters comprises a pair of the first and second set of pre-computed parameters defining the operation mode for the first and second communication layers for the associated one of the different scenarios; a selector for selecting from the storage element directly one jointly optimized set of parameters dependent from the channel property the desired transmission quality for the first information and for the second information; and a provider for providing the first set of parameters and the second set of parameters from the selected jointly optimized set of parameters to the first communication layer and the second set of parameters to the second communication layer.