Patent ID: 8447342

Claim:
A method of power control in a wireless communication system wherein blocks of a transport channel are transmitted from a transmitter to a receiver via a wireless transmission channel, there being a period of time where no data blocks are transmitted for that transport channel, the method comprising comparing a target signal quality value with a received signal quality value and providing the results of the comparing step to the transmitter to adjust transmit power based on the comparing step, wherein the target signal quality value is set by the following steps: determining an initial target value; detecting if a data block has been received, said detecting generating detection error events in said period of time which appear as fail blocks; detecting if received blocks have been successfully decoded, and identifying the received blocks as pass or fail blocks; and decreasing the target value when pass blocks are received and increasing the target value when fail blocks are received subject to monitoring a period of inactivity on the transport channel in which no blocks and fail blocks are identified and where the period of inactivity exceeds a threshold reducing a current target value to a value determined by the target value at commencement of the period of inactivity.