Embodiments of the present disclosure provide methods and apparatus for configuring additional CPICHs, e.g. third CPICH, fourth CPICH, etc., to support MIMO transmissions of rank three or higher. The additional CPICHs may be configured with two or more power levels. A radio network controller (RNC) sends configuration information for the additional CPICHs to a serving base station in a cell to configure the additional CPICHs. The additional CPICHs can be configured to have a fixed power level, or multiple power levels. When the additional CPICHs are configured with multiple power levels, the base station can select the appropriate power level for each CPICH in dependence on current scheduling decisions in order to reduce inference.