Transmission power levels of uplink/downlink communication is controlled
in a wireless communication system. A receiving station produces and
provides to a transmitting station power control information based upon
received signals from the transmitting station. A measured block error
rate (BLER.sub.msr) is obtained from the number of erroneous blocks in a
sliding window of the last N received data blocks and SIR adjustments are
set based upon the BLER.sub.msr and a target BLER (BLER.sub.target). A
target SIR of received signals is adjusted according to the SIR
adjustments.