Patent ID: 8548028

Claim:
A method, comprising: assigning a desired user in a first plurality of users to a first group and other users in the first plurality of users to a second group, wherein the first plurality of users are served by a base station; assigning a second plurality of users served by another base station to the second group; generating a minimum mean square error (MMSE) equalizer using channel information for the first plurality of users and corresponding to a plurality of receive antennas, wherein generating the MMSE equalizer includes, using a ratio of (i) white noise power to (ii) noise power due to code division multiple access (CDMA) signals corresponding to the first plurality of users, using channel information for the second plurality of users, using a ratio of (i) noise power due to CDMA signals corresponding to the second plurality of users to (ii) the noise power due to CDMA signals corresponding to the first plurality of users; wherein the method further comprises: filtering the CDMA signals received by the plurality of receive antennas using the MMSE equalizer, the CDMA signals including overlapping signal components corresponding to the first plurality of users; and despreading the filtered CDMA signals using a spread code corresponding to the desired user.