Antenna adaptation in a time division duplexing system

1 . A method for setting a power level in a wireless communication system given a directional setting of an antenna, the method comprising the steps of:

determining a gain adjustment factor that depends upon the directional setting of an antenna; and

applying the gain adjustment factor to control a power level of a transmitted signal.

2 . A method as in claim 1 wherein the power control is a closed loop power control.

3 . A method as in claim 1 wherein the power control is for an uplink channel.

4 . A method as in claim 1 wherein the power control is for a downlink channel.

5 . A method as in claim 1 further comprising the step of: applying the gain adjustment factor to a path loss estimate.

6 . A method as in claim 1 further comprising the step of applying the gain adjustment factor to a reverse link power control setting.

7 . A method for dynamically determining a steering direction of an antenna in a wireless system comprising:

providing a transmission quality metric applicable to describe a quality measure of a wireless signal;

applying the quality metric to a current steering position of the antenna;

repainting the antenna to a trial steering position;

reapplying the quality metric to the trial steering position;

comparing the quality metrics of the current and trial steering positions;

repeating the repainting by incrementally selecting a new trial steering position; and

selecting a best steering position by comparing each of the incremented trial steering positions.

8 . The method of claim 7 further comprising the step of:

repeating the repainting step through the selection step for a plurality of trial steering positions.

9 . A method as in claim 7 further comprising: determining an active time slot sequence, the active time slots employed for transmission of data;

identifying a frame offset in the sequence of the active time slots;

determining non-occupied time slots in the sequence based on a frame offset; and

transmitting information in directional non-active time slots.

10 . A method as in claim 7 wherein the directional information is indicative of a plurality of the candidate settings.

11 . A method as in claim 7 further comprising the step of:

computing an optimum setting from the directional information transmitted for a plurality of candidate directions.

12 . A method for a user equipment device to acquire signals transmitted from a central base station in a wireless communication system, the method comprising the steps of:

selecting an omnidirectional mode for an antenna;

acquiring signals transmitted by one or more base stations with the antenna in the omnidirectional mode, and assigning such detected signals as a detected set;

for each available directional setting provided by the directional antenna, determining a received signal strength for each base station in the detected set;

for each such directional setting, determining a ratio of a detected cell having a higher receive signal strength and a sum of the signal strengths for the other detected cells; and

selecting the base station having the largest such ratio to be used as the active base station.

13 . A method as in claim 12 wherein the number of available directions is at least three.

14 . A method as in claim 12 wherein the system is a Time Division Duplex system.

15 . A method as in claim 12 wherein the signal strength is a Received Signal Power (RCSP) measurement.