Patent ID: 7120468

Claim:
A method of determining an optimal antenna position of a directional antenna in a wireless communication system, comprising calculating a steering metric value SM(k) at each data rate index (k) for a plurality of possible beam positions for the directional antenna; and selecting one of the plurality of possible antenna positions for the directional antenna having a highest steering metric value, wherein the steering metric value SM(k) is given by: SM ( k )=(1 −C ( k ))*(0.5−PER( k ))+[ C ( k )*( G ( k )−mean G )]/sigma G, where: k=a data rate index of the wireless communication channel, C(k)=a weight applied based on data rate of the wireless communication channel, PER(k)=an estimated packet error rate of the wireless communication channel, G(k)=gain reduction applied during reception of an acknowledgement packet on the wireless communication channel, meanG=a constant mean value of G(k) determined based on empirical data from data collection at various data rates, and sigmaG=standard deviation of the G(k) determined based on empirical data from data collection at various data rates.