In order to increase a capacity, or a number of mobile stations (MSs), or
users, that may engaged in concurrent communication sessions, a
communication system is provided that schedules a different MS, or user,
in each beam of multiple predetermined, fixed beams associated with a
coverage area, in particular a sector. By simultaneously scheduling a
user in each beam of the multiple beams, a performance and throughput of
communication system is significantly increased over the prior art. In
one embodiment of the present invention, a portion of a shared
communication channel that is allocated to each MS is concurrently
transmitted to each MS via a beam associated with the MS. In other
embodiments of the present invention, voice channels, data channels, and
control channels associated with each MS scheduled in a beam may be
concurrently transmitted to each MS via the beam associated with the MS.