are being introduced as broadband alternatives in some test markets. These new wireless networks are facing serious obstacles in compet- ing for bandwidth, sometimes having to share bands with cordless phones or even microwave ovens. Even when the wireless providers use licensed bands, they face the prospect of many customers simultaneously uplinking and down- linking information across the net, creating cochannel interference. The wireless local loops work much like cell phones via a base station that sends the radio signals carrying the Internet connection out to any customer whose residence or business is equipped with an appropriate antenna. Unlike cell phone usage, however, the two-directional uplink and downlink traffic between the customer and the Internet provider's base station is more asym- metrical with very little use during sleeping hours and lots of use when kids come home from school and download music or play games, for example. Kavehrad says, "The nature of multimedia traffic is not static in uplink and downlink directions, as with voice telephony, and the bandwidth is more biased toward downlink transmissions." Wireless local loops need both software and hardware that enables the network to respond to the changes in traffic while also making sure that every hertz in the available spectrum is used as efficiently as possible. In addition, the system must contend with the fact that some incoming interfering signals are stronger than others. The solution developed by the Penn State engineers is software that allows the subscriber signal, whose direction of arrival is subject to a lesser number of strong interferers, to be processed ahead of the ones experiencing the most interference. In other words, the new strategy is a scheme that allows avoid- ing strong cochannel interference by sequencing the processing of the signals according to the amount of interference they are experiencing. Because the amount of interference any subscriber's signal experiences varies microsecond by microsecond, no subscr