A method for outer loop rate control in high data rate wireless networks

A method is proposed for the control of data rate selection in mobile terminals complying with the IS-856 high data rate wireless standard. The technique involves adjusting a set of signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio thresholds, equal in number to the number of available data rates, according to the pattern of received frame errors. The algorithm allows the mobile terminal to adapt its data rate decisions to the channel conditions, and allows fast convergence to the overall target packet error rate, an assurance of equal packet error rate for each of the different data rates, and high throughput. The proposed algorithm is practical for implementation at the mobile terminals since it works simply based on an outer loop rate control mechanism and it does not require any lookup tables or prediction of channel conditions.