Patent ID: 6982968

Claim:
A method of transmitting a downlink signal from a first communication station of a communication system to a remote communication device, the first communication station having a smart antenna system, the method comprising: providing a first set of sequential time intervals for the first communication station, each of the time intervals having a selected number of downlink conventional channels, and an associated conventional channel on an uplink conventional channel associated with each of the downlink conventional channels, each associated uplink conventional channel having predefined relationship to its associated downlink conventional channel; providing one or more further sets of sequential time intervals, each set of the one or more further sets of sequential time intervals associated with one or more other communication stations of the communication system, the further sets of sequential time intervals for communication between the other communication stations and one or more other remote communication devices associated with the other communication stations; receiving one or more uplink signals from one or more of the other, undesired remote communication devices as interference on one or more uplink channels associated with a first downlink conventional channel; determining a downlink smart antenna processing strategy for transmitting from the first communication station in a non-directional manner on the first downlink conventional channel, the strategy including mitigating interference towards the one or more other remote communication devices to reduce with respect to the one or more undesired remote communication devices, a strength of a signal transmitted by the first communication station on the first downlink conventional channel, the downlink processing strategy using the received unlink signals as inputs to provide interference mitigation; and transmitting a downlink signal in a non-directional manner from the first communication station on the first downlink conventional channel using the determined downlink processing strategy.