Patent ID: 8831670

Claim:
A user device in a cellular communications network, comprising: a transceiver providing a communications link between the user device and a base station, the user device located within a cell of the cellular communications network served by the base station via a communications link channel having a full channel bandwidth including a plurality of sub-carrier frequencies; and a processor associated with the transceiver and adapted to: transmit a wideband channel quality index to the base station; transmit a plurality of sub-band channel quality indices to the base station; in response to a determination that a power boost is needed for a communications link between the base station and the user device, use a subset of the plurality of sub-carrier frequencies of the communications link channel as a reduced bandwidth channel for the communications link between the user device and the base station such that signal power is concentrated on the subset of the plurality of sub-carrier frequencies in the reduced bandwidth channel rather than distributed across the full channel bandwidth, thereby providing a power boost for the communications link to the user device; wherein the determination that a power boost is needed for the communications link between the base station and the user device is based on the wideband channel quality index; wherein the subset of the plurality of sub-carrier frequencies are determined based at least in part on the plurality of sub-band channel quality indices; and receive an indication of the subset of the plurality of sub-carrier frequencies of the communications link channel from the base station, the indication of the subset of the plurality of sub-carrier frequencies comprising an indication of a number of resource blocks, each resource block containing twelve sub-carrier frequencies, wherein the subset of the plurality of sub-carrier frequencies of the communications link channel is coordinated with at least one other base station, wherein the other base station uses a different subset of the plurality of sub-carrier frequencies.