Patent attributes
A mobile device comprises a receiver unit that has at least two receivers to implement multi-antenna receive diversity. A control unit estimates, at the mobile, an amount of utilization by a traffic channel of the mobile of total transmission power capacity at a base station. The mobile applies multi-antenna receive diversity in the mobile device based on the power capacity utilization. The mobile estimates an amount of power a network is transmitting to the mobile relative to a pilot reference. Other indicators are based on quality of the traffic channel between the mobile and the network, capacity limiting resources, a number of sectors in a soft hand-off in a wireless system, etc. The indicators are used to control application of multi-antenna receive diversity in a mobile device.