A base station for communicating with mobile stations in a coverage area of the wireless network. The base station comprises: 1) a transceiver for transmitting downlink OFDMA signals to each mobile station; 2) an antenna array for transmitting the downlink OFDMA signals to the mobile stations using spatially directed beams; and 3) an SDMA scheduling controller for scheduling downlink transmissions to the mobile stations. The SDMA scheduling controller determines a first mobile station having a highest priority and schedules the first mobile station for downlink transmission in a particular time-frequency slot. The SDMA scheduling controller then determines additional mobile stations that are spatially uncorrelated with the first mobile station, as well as each other, and schedules the additional mobile stations for downlink transmission in that particular time-frequency slot according to priority.