Patent ID: 7936841

Claim:
A method of controlling a communication device, the communication device including an inner coder and an outer coder, the communication device operable to transmit digital data over a plurality of frequency channels, the method comprising: obtaining a characteristic of each of the plurality of frequency channels; selecting performance parameters of the inner coder for each channel and performance parameters of the outer coder for each channel based in part on the obtained characteristic of the channel, the performance parameter selecting including: storing, for each of a plurality of combinations of inner coder performance parameters and outer coder performance parameters, a corresponding transmission power requirement; and selecting a combination of inner coder performance parameters and outer coder performance parameters by selecting a transmission power requirement to achieve a multi-channel efficiency over respective data rates; and allocating data to be transmitted to each channel; wherein the parameter combination selecting includes: selecting an initial data rate and transmission power requirement, the initial data rate and transmission power requirement corresponding to a first combination of inner coder performance parameters and outer coder performance parameters; and selecting an adjusted data rate and transmission power requirement based on a multi-channel efficiency, the adjusted data rate and transmission power requirement corresponding to a second combination of inner coder performance parameters and outer coder performance parameters.