Patent ID: 8160022

Claim:
A wireless communication system, comprising: a plurality of wireless base stations and a plurality of wireless access terminals, wherein each wireless base station of the plurality of wireless base stations including: a receiver for receiving wireless channel quality information which is sent from a plurality of wireless access terminals, respectively, a storage for storing the wireless channel quality information, and a calculator to calculate a transmission rate allocated to each of the plurality of wireless access terminals in accordance with the wireless channel quality information and channel quality information calculated in the wireless base station, and wherein the calculator allocates the calculated transmission rate; wherein each wireless access terminal of the plurality of wireless access terminals including: a unit for measuring a wireless channel quality; a unit for reporting the measured wireless channel quality to a wireless base station; a unit for receiving transmission rate allocation information from the wireless base station; and a unit for transmitting a packet using the allocated transmission rate; and wherein one of the plurality of wireless base stations receives a subject packet from a hand-off wireless access terminal which has handed off to one of the plurality of wireless base stations, the base stations searches a header of this subject packet to extract channel quality information sent from the hand-off wireless access terminal, the channel quality information being included in this subject header, sets an initial value of the allocated transmission rate for the hand-off wireless access terminal based on the extracted channel quality information, and thereafter performs calculation of an updated transmission rate for the hand-off wireless access terminal.