A base station and method are described herein that vertically sweeps an antenna beam within a cell to improve the signal quality at scheduled times for a user terminal located within a coverage area of the cell. In one embodiment, the method improves a signal quality for a user terminal by: (a) vertically sweeping a beam within a cell coverage area to vary a signal quality at scheduled times for the user terminal located within the cell coverage area; and (b) performing one or more scheduling functions while taking into account variations in the vertical sweep of the antenna beam. For instance, the scheduling function(s) can include a link adaptation function, a resource allocation function, a user admittance/dropping function, a handover function, and/or a hybrid automatic repeat request function.