Patent ID: 7738422

Claim:
A method of scheduling users in a reception area of a wireless communication network to receive transmissions from a base station during a sequence of timeslots, comprising: (a) assigning, to each of at least some users in the reception area, a different slot priority for each timeslot in the sequence, wherein the slot priorities are based at least in part on indications of channel quality such that users having channels of similar quality tend to have their respective highest slot priorities fall in the same timeslot; (b) assigning to each of at least some said users a scheduling priority for each said timeslot, wherein each scheduling priority is based in part on the corresponding slot priority and is based in part on a fairness criterion; and (c) at the base station, scheduling a user in each said timeslot according to the scheduling priorities of the respective users for that timeslot; wherein the reception area is one of a group of mutually neighboring reception areas belonging to distinct frequency reuse groups, and the slot priorities are assigned in the same way in all reception areas that belong to said neighbor group.