Robust Techniques for Upstream Communication Between Subscriber Stations and a Base Station

A base station comprising:

• a receiver for processing an upstream signal received on an uplink channel from a subscriber station;
• a transmitter for sending a downstream signal on a downlink channel from the base station to the subscriber station;
• and
• a monitoring circuit for collecting packet based statistics representative of a channel quality of the uplink channel based on the upstream signal, the monitoring circuit sending a message to the transmitter to change a physical layer parameter used to send the downstream signal in response to the collected statistics and to the burst receiver to process the data signal based on the changed physical layer parameter.