SECTORIZED BASE STATIONS AS MULTIPLE ANTENNA SYSTEMS

Methods and apparatus for improved utilization of air link resources are discussed in wireless communications systems employing multi-sector base stations and wireless terminals with multiple antennas. Timing synchronization is maintained across the base station sectors, and the same set of tones are used in adjacent sectors. In a sector boundary region, which is typically a high interference region, a wireless terminal is set to a sector pair state and operated in a MIMO mode of operation, communicating with two adjacent base station antenna faces of the same base station concurrently, the two different adjacent base station antenna faces corresponding to different adjacent sectors. Thus, typically high interference sector boundary regions, are converted into high capacity regions by having the sectors coordinated and utilizing MIMO techniques.