METHOD, APPARATUS AND BASE STATION FOR DETERMINING A RADIO LINK CHARACTERISTIC

• US 20090181673A1
• Filed: 10/31/2005
• Published: 07/16/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 12/06/2004
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Google Technology Holdings LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Motorola, Inc. (Motorola Solutions, Inc.)
• Inventors: Barrett, Stephen J.
• Application Number:
  US11/575,822
• Publication Number:
  US 20090181673A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 455/436
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 36/0055 Transmission or use of information for re-establishing the radio link
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 36/0058 Transmission of hand-off measurement information, e.g. measurement reports
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 36/302 due to low signal strength

Abstract

A cellular communication system supports both soft handover communication channels and non-soft handover communication channels from the same user equipment (101). A serving base station (103) comprises a receive front end (201) for receiving transmissions from the user equipment (101). A first indication processor (203) receives a first link quality indication associated with a first signal of a soft handover communication channel from the user equipment (101). A second indication processor 205 receives a second link quality indication associated with a second signal of a non-soft handover channel from the user equipment (101). A characteristic processor (207) then determines the radio link characteristic in response to the first and second link quality indications. For example a power control command for a soft handover signal and a channel quality indicator for a non-soft handover signal may be compared and a radio link quality may be determined in response to the comparison.

Claims

1. An apparatus for determining a radio link characteristic of a radio link between a base station and a user equipment in a cellular communication system, the apparatus comprising:

means for receiving a first link quality indication associated with a first signal of a soft handover communication channel from the user equipment;

means for receiving a second link quality indication associated with a second signal of a non-soft handover channel from the user equipment; and

means for determining the radio link characteristic in response to the first and second link quality indications.

2. The apparatus claimed in claim 1 wherein the radio link is a radio link supporting the non-soft handover channel.

3. The apparatus claimed in claim 1 wherein the means for determining the radio link characteristic is operable to determine the radio link characteristic in response to a correlation between the first link quality indication and the second link quality indication.

4. The apparatus claimed in claim 3 wherein the radio link characteristic is a radio quality characteristic and the means for determining the radio link characteristic is operable to determine an increasing radio link quality for an increasing correlation.

5. The apparatus claimed in claim 3 wherein the means for determining the radio link characteristic is operable to determine the correlation in response to a variation of the first link quality indication in comparison to a variation of the second link quality indication.

6. The apparatus claimed in claim 1 further comprising means for determining a relative quality of the radio link relative to other radio links supporting the soft handover communication channel.

7. The apparatus claimed in claim 6 further comprising means for predicting a handover of the second signal in response to the relative quality.

8. The apparatus claimed in claim 7 wherein the means for predicting the likely handover is operable to detect that a handover is likely if the relative quality is indicative of a quality of the radio link being lower than a quality of at least one radio link of the radio links supporting the soft handover communication channel.

9. The apparatus claimed in claim 7 wherein the apparatus comprises means for reducing a buffer loading associated with the second signal in response to a prediction of a handover.

10. The apparatus claimed in claim 7 wherein the apparatus comprises a scheduler which is operable to schedule data for the second signal only if no handover is predicted.