Opportunistic Uplink Feedback Scheme for MU-MIMO Systems

A method of using a mobile station comprising:

• establishing an association between the mobile station and a base station via a communications channel, wherein the communications channel is divided into resource blocks;
• receiving, from the base station, a broadcast signal-to-noise (SNR) threshold message including a SNR threshold value;
• measuring a SNR for each resource block of the received SNR threshold message;
• and
• if at least one resource block includes a SNR equal to or above the SNR threshold value, transmitting a reporting message, to the base station, indicating which resource block(s) include a SNR equal to or above the SNR threshold value.

An apparatus comprising:

• a transceiver configured to:
• establish an association between the apparatus and at least one mobile station (MS) via a communications channel, wherein the communications channel is divided into resource bands,
• broadcast a signal-to-noise (SNR) threshold message that includes a SNR threshold, and
• receive at least one reporting message, from at least one of the mobile stations, indicating which resource bands the respective mobile station(s) measured a SNR equal to or above the SNR threshold;
• a memory configured to:
• store at least a portion of the information included in the received reporting message(s);
• and
• a controller configured to:
• allocate resource blocks for communication with the mobile station(s) based, at least in part, upon the received reporting message(s).

An apparatus comprising:

• a transceiver configured to:
• establish an association between the apparatus and a base station (BS) via a communications channel, wherein the communications channel is divided into resource bands,
• receive, from the base station, a signal-to-noise (SNR) threshold message including a SNR threshold value;
• if at least one resource band includes a SNR equal to or above the SNR threshold value, transmit a reporting message, to the base station, indicating which resource bands include a SNR equal to or above the SNR threshold value;
• and
• a controller configured to:
• measure channel state information for each resource band of the communications channel.