Patent ID: 7965649

Claim:
A method for subcarrier quality estimation in a wireless network, comprising: communicating with a base station to select one of a plurality of techniques for creating feedback data; analyzing characteristics of at least some of a plurality of subcarriers of a first signal; using the selected technique, creating the feedback data based on the analyzed characteristics, wherein the quantity of the feedback data is less than the quantity of all of a plurality of signal-to-interference and noise power ratio (SINR) values of each subcarrier of the first signal; and transmitting the feedback data, wherein the plurality of techniques comprises determining an N-th order polynomial approximation of a sequence of the SINR values of each of the at least some subcarriers of the first signal, the N-th order polynomial approximation having N+1 coefficients, N greater than or equal to two, and transmitting as feedback the N+1 coefficients.