Patent ID: 8825100

Claim:
A method of operating a base station in a cellular communications network to provide a power boost for a communications link between the base station and a user device over a communications link channel having a full channel bandwidth including a plurality of sub-carrier frequencies, comprising: receiving a wideband channel quality index from the user device; receiving a plurality of sub-band channel quality indices from the user device; determining whether a power boost is needed for a communications link between the base station and the user device based on the received wideband channel quality index; if a power boost is needed for the communications link between the base station and the user device, using a subset of the plurality of sub-carrier frequencies of the communications link channel as a reduced bandwidth channel for the communications link to the user device such that signal power is concentrated on the subset of the plurality of sub-carrier frequencies in the reduced bandwidth channel rather than distributed across the full channel bandwidth, thereby providing a power boost for the communications link to the user device, wherein the subset of the plurality of sub-carrier frequencies are determined based at least in part on the received the plurality of sub-band channel quality indices; and coordinating the subset of the plurality of sub-carrier frequencies of the communications link channel with at least one other base station, wherein the other base station uses a different subset of the plurality of sub-carrier frequencies, wherein the subset of the plurality of sub-carrier frequencies are coordinated based on an indication of a number of resource blocks, each resource block containing twelve sub-carrier frequencies.