Channel quality estimation with channel error counts for adaptive signaling in wireless communications

Accurate channel quality estimates are needed for a variety of reasons in wireless communication systems, such as for power control and for adaptive transmission and routing. Channel quality information can be derived from many sources at the receiver, including statistical characterizations of the channel, information from the demodulation process, and information from the error-correcting and error-detecting codes. One simple method for estimating the channel quality is to estimate the channel error rate by re-encoding the outputs of the error-correcting code and comparing the re-encoded symbols to hard decisions at the demodulator output. We present analysis and simulation results for several different channel quality estimates derived from estimates of the channel error rate.