Patent ID: 7630344

Claim:
In a communications network comprising a base station and a plurality of user equipment (UE), the network having at least one radio frequency communications path between each UE and the base station, the base station comprising a plurality of antennas and at least one base station receiver, a method of reducing multiple access interference in at least one radio frequency communications path between the base station and at least one UE, the method comprising: interleaving space-time adaptive processing (STAP) and multi-user detection (MUD) in a first plurality of stages in a base station receiver, by: selecting at least one UE connection for MUD processing by stage, and in a second plurality of stages: demodulating the UE connections selected for MUD processing in a current stage, the demodulation employing STAP, and performing MUD cancellation on UE connections selected for MUD processing in the current stage; and acquiring new UE connections after at least one stage of MUD cancellation; and commanding transmit power for each UE connection; at least one UE connection being characterized by a target E b /N 0 at least equal to a corresponding threshold target E b /N 0 , and selecting UE connections for MUD processing by stage comprises estimating the multiple access interference contribution of each UE connection having a target E b /N 0 at least equal to the corresponding threshold target E b /N 0 ; and UE connections characterized by a target E b /N 0 at least equal to a corresponding threshold target E b /N 0 are selected for MUD processing in order of descending multiple access interference contribution.