Abstract: A terminal communicates with a serving base station and at least one soft handoff (SHO) base station for soft handoff on the reverse link in a wireless communication system. In one design, the serving base station schedules the terminal for transmission on the reverse link, forms an assignment for the terminal, and generates signaling for the terminal. The assignment indicates communication parameter(s) to be used by the terminal for transmission on the reverse link. The signaling contains sufficient information to allow the SHO base station(s) to receive and process the transmission from the terminal. The serving base station sends the signaling via a backhaul to the SHO base station(s). Each SHO base station receives the signaling via the backhaul, receives the transmission from the terminal via the reverse link, and processes the transmission in accordance with the signaling to recover the data sent in the transmission.

Abstract: The system and method utilize design criteria and construction for signal constellations in communication systems, such as cellular telephony, that have imperfect channel state information at the receiver. The system and method assume an imperfect knowledge of fading channel state information (600B) and statistics of channel fading (600D) are used to encode additional information into the space-time matrix signal constellation as variations in amplitude of constellation (600E) points. In the preferred embodiment space-time matrix constellations and design criterion are based on the Kullback-Leibler distance between conditional distributions.

Abstract: A first data symbol that includes a kth data bit is received over a multicarrier system. A first channel quality parameter is estimated for the first data symbol. A second data symbol that includes a retransmitted kth data bit is received. A second channel quality parameter for the second data symbol is estimated. A probable value of the kth data bit is determined based on both the first channel quality parameter and the second channel quality parameter. In response to an ARQ for data symbols communicated over a multicarrier system, the following are performed: determining channel quality parameters, each of the channel quality parameters corresponding to at least one of the transmitted data symbols; selecting a subset of the channel quality parameters exhibiting a worst quality; constructing a block of data symbols corresponding to the subset; and communicating the block of data symbols over a plurality of subcarriers.

Abstract: A generalized zigzag code is described where the code segments (each including one parity bit and information bits) of a block are not necessarily of uniform length. For coding rates in which the average code segment length is not an integer, all code segment lengths may be identical. The number of code segments depends on the coding rate and number of information bits in a block. At the encoder, parity bits are added to each string of information bits in a block to yield the code segments. For a punctured code, concatenated or not, the encoder may remove or not generate the punctured parity bits. At a decoder that operates at a rate different from the code rate of a received block, null parity bits are inserted. The received block has a number of code segments. The decoder increases the number of code segments by the addition of null parity bits, thereby reducing the coding rate to the rate of the decoder. Methods and apparatuses are detailed.

Abstract: A multi-level space time signal constellation that is optimized for use with a multi-carrier, multi-path communication scheme includes points on a first level separated from points on a mutually exclusive second level by a minimum distance that is based on a conditional probability distribution, preferably a Kullback-Leibler (KL) distance. Points within one level may be separated by a Euclidean distance, but spherical levels are rotated relative to one another to maximize a minimum inter-level KL distance. A receiver uses pilot symbols to estimate the channels and two-stage symbol detection, determining in one stage the constellation level and in another stage the point in the level. The receiver calculates a likelihood function based on a conditional distribution which does not reduce to the Euclidean-based nearest-neighbor detector. A single stored constellation may be scaled based on received signal to noise ratio.

Abstract: A signal constellation is optimized for trellis coded modulation in fast fading channels, where the receiver does not have perfect knowledge of the channel parameters. Specifically, the signal constellation is partitioned into 2n mutually exclusive subsets, each preferably defining two points. Points within each subset are separated from one another by a distance between conditional distributions, preferably a Kullback-Leibler (KL) distance. For a block m=k1+k2 of information bits input into a trellis coder 30, the k, bits are trellis encoded into n bits (n>k1) and used to select a subset of the constellation. The k2 bit(s) is/are used to select a particular point within the subset. Because the inter-subset distance between points is a KL distance that is effectively greater than a Euclidean distance, error at the receiver is substantially reduced, especially at higher SNR. Using a KL distance ensures statistics of channel fading are inherent within the signal constellation.

Abstract: A apparatus and method for improved performance in radio telecommunications systems, and in particular multi-carrier code division multiple access (MC-CDMA) networks that employ pulse-shaping filters on the transmit side of a radio link. In order to more accurately transmit a radio signal bearing a symbol sequence, the modulated and spread information stream is upsampled using a technique that involves inserting zeros in the frequency domain. A corresponding downsampling procedure on the receive side permits reconstruction of the transmitted symbols. A new channel estimation algorithm may also be used, and the improved channel estimation advantageously employed to obtain more faithful symbol detection.

Abstract: A system and method for the efficient transmission of information in a code division multiple access (CDMA) wireless telecommunication system. The rate of reliable transmission is increased by implementing an orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) scheme in, for example, a direct-spread CDMA network, resulting in a multi-carrier CDMA (MC-CDMA) system. Information (such as voice and data), is encoded, divided, and spread across the frequency domain, rather than in the time domain as in traditional CDMA; the allowable transmission bandwidth is divided into a number of carriers. Using this scheme, a number of loading parameters such as code rate, data rate, and the number of streams into which the encoded data is divided may be varied to increase the performance of the system. Application of the variable loading parameter may be a function of channel quality, such as the presence of noise or the channel fading state.