A method for a base station to optimize radio resource utilization and adjust
data
rates in a wireless digital communications system. The base station communicates
with a plurality of user equipment mobile terminals (UEs) and employs adaptive
modulation and coding (AM&C) to achieve improved radio resource utilization and
provide optimum data rates for user services. Blocks of downlink (DL) data are
received by the base station which requests downlink DL channel quality measurements
only from those mobile terminals (UEs) with pending downlink transmissions. The
UEs respond to the request by measuring and reporting DL channel quality to the
base station, which then allocates resources such that the UEs will make best use
of radio resources. The base station notifies the UEs of the physical channel allocation
indicating the modulation/coding rate and allocated slots followed by transmission
of blocks of downlink data which are transmitted to the UEs.
