Apparatus and method for power control in a radio communication system

An apparatus for power control in a system for radio communication between a first station and a second station, the apparatus comprising:

• power indication means at the first station for communicating to the second station an indication of the received power of signals at the first station;
• and
• power control means at the second station for receiving the indication of received power from the first station and for accordingly modifying its transmission power;
• wherein the power control means comprises inner control loop means for producing a power control metric;
• outer control loop means for producing an outer loop threshold signal (OLT) dependent on received quality of service (QoS),
• and wherein the outer control loop means comprises means for producing a channel error rate signal (ChER) whereby to track channel variations, the channel error rate signal relating to an error rate of received information bits prior to error decoding and the outer loop threshold signal being dependent on the channel error rate signal.