media access control 18 layer 3 and nas 20 and application layer 22 including tcp transport control protocol ip internet protocol functionality the operation of these layers will only be described herein to the extent that they have been modified by operation of embodiments of the present invention their operation in this respect will become apparent from the following description the rf driver 14 cooperates with layer 1 to control the transmit power ensuring that sufficient but not excessive power is transmitted to achieve an adequate receive signal quality an rf receiver 39 fig2 c in the rf driver layer 14 receives an incoming signal rx signal and determines gain settings for the signal processing based on this it reports a value reported rx level to layer 1 as described more fully later in the following embodiment this reported level is adjusted by an attenuation factor fig2 a is a schematic block diagram indicating the main functional components of the 3gpp wideband code division multiple access wcdma receiver which implements such closed loop power control mechanism fig2 a illustrates an uplink closed loop power control mechanism without the use of attenuation factors as described herein on the transmit side a wireless device has a transmitter 24 which includes a power amplifier which can be controlled to modify the transmit power a signal is transmitted to a receiving device the receiving device measures the received signal power at block 26 and generates up down power commands at block 29 which it sends to the transmitting device as an example the transmit device can be a ue incorporating a modem described herein and the receiving device can be a base station in a wireless cellular communication system the up down commands are.