Patent ID: 7209515

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 reciever, 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 commanding transmit power for each UE connection, by: determining a base target E b /N 0 as a function of at least one data quality metric (DQM); estimating a received E b /N 0 for each UE connection, for each UE connection designated for MUD processing, adjusting the base target E 0 /N 0 upward; for each UB connection not designated for MUD processing, where the estimated E b /N 0 is less than the base target E b /N 0 , commanding increased UE connection transmit power; and for each UE connection designated for MUD processing, where the estimated E b /N 0 is less than the adjusted base target E b /N 0 , commanding increased UE connection transmit power.