Techniques are described for adapting receiver settings used by a mobile terminal operating in a heterogeneous network comprising macro cells and pico cells with overlapping coverage areas. A first set of subframes is allocated to the pico cells for downlink transmissions to a mobile terminal in a link imbalance zone. The mobile terminal acquires information about the subframe allocation and uses the subframe allocation information to select the signals used for adapting receiver settings used when operating in the link imbalance zone.