Communication apparatus and method of format adaptation therefor

Abstract

This invention relates to a communication apparatus (203) and method of format adaptation particularly suited for a CDMA cellular communication system. A transmitter (211) transmits a signal to a communication apparatus (203) using a specific transmission format. The transmission includes transmission format information allowing the receiver (217) to adapt to the current transmission format. A hybrid scheme is adopted where transmit format information needed for symbol information is generally transmitted in a transmission block prior to the one where it is applied whereas transmit format information relevant to processing of the demodulated symbols is transmitted in the same transmission block to which it applies. The communication apparatus (203) thus comprise adjustment means (223) operable to adjust a characteristic of the current or future transmission blocks in response to the received transmission format information. The invention is applicable to the UMTS mobile cellular communication system.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.