A method and apparatus of imparting coverage gain to cell-edge or cusp mobile subscribers without resort to diluted frequency reuse factors is disclosed. Each base station adopts a priori a beam illumination sequence designed to minimize or obviate the likelihood of beam clashes in a narrow beam adaptive beamforming system. Such sequences may be optimized to impact primarily cell-edge subscribers or subscribers within cusp areas of adjoining beams or sectors. The inventive protocols may be applicable to fixed multibeam systems as well as individual steered beam and spatial null generation antenna systems.