Method and apparatus for increasing performance of a communication link of a communication node

• US 9,794,888 B2
• Filed: 04/20/2015
• Issued: 10/17/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 05/05/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: ISCO International Inc.
• Original Assignee: ISCO International Inc.
• Inventors: Abdelmonem, Amr, Seoane, Jorge, Galeev, Mikhail, Komoravolu, Krishna, Wang, Zhigang, Reichard, Jr., Gordon
• Primary Examiner(s): Bhattacharya, Sam
• Application Number:
  US14/690,759
• Publication Number:
  US 20150319625A1
• Time in Patent Office: 911 Days
• Field of Search: 455 631, 455418, 455419, 455561
• CPC Class Codes: H04J 11/005 of intercell interference
• CPC Class Codes: H04J 11/0066 of narrowband interference narrowband interference reduction H04B1/1036
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 5/0021 in which codes are applied as a frequency-domain sequences, e.g. MC-CDMA
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 5/0023 Time-frequency-space
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 5/006 Quality of the received signal, e.g. BER, SNR, water filling
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 5/0073 Allocation arrangements that take into account other cell interferences for intercell interference mitigation or co-ordination in orthogonal multiplex systems H04J11/005
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 24/02 Arrangements for optimising operational condition
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 24/08 Testing, supervising or monitoring using real traffic
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 24/10 Scheduling measurement reports ; Arrangements for measurement reports
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 52/241 taking into account channel quality metrics, e.g. SIR, SNR, CIR, Eb/lo
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 52/243 taking into account interferences
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 72/541 using the level of interference
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 72/542 using measured or perceived quality
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 88/08 Access point devices

Abstract

A system that incorporates aspects of the subject disclosure may perform operations including, for example, monitoring performance parameters in a communications network, identifying a degradation in performance of one or more nodes of the communications network according the monitored performance parameters, and initiating corrective action to mitigate the degradation in performance of the one or more nodes of the communications network. Other embodiments are disclosed.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

obtaining, by a cell site, a first baseline average power across a frequency range and across a plurality of sectors or a plurality of paths;

determining, by the cell site, a first threshold from the first baseline average power that is obtained;

obtaining, by the cell site, Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR) measurements for the plurality of sectors or the plurality of paths;

determining, by the cell site, whether one or more of the SINR measurements are below the first threshold;

initiating, by the cell site, corrective action to improve a SINR measurement of an affected sector of the plurality of sectors or an affected path of the plurality of paths falling below the first threshold;

obtaining, by the cell site, a second baseline average power across the frequency range and across the plurality of sectors or the plurality of paths;

determining, by the cell site, a second threshold from the second baseline average power that is obtained; and

determining, by the cell site, whether the corrective action has improved the SINR measurement of the affected sector or the affected path according to the second threshold.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising reversing at least in part, by the cell site, the corrective action responsive to determining that the corrective action has not improved the SINR measurement of the affected sector or the affected path.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising determining, by the cell site, whether the corrective action has reduced a SINR measurement of other sectors or paths.

4. The method of claim 3, further comprising reversing at least in part, by the cell site, the corrective action responsive to determining that a SINR measurement of another sector or another path has been reduced below an undesirable SINR threshold.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the first threshold is determined according to a time of day, an event affecting operations of the cell site, a key performance indicator (KPI), or any combination thereof.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the initiating of the corrective action further comprises adjusting one or more KPIs of the affected sector or affected path.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the SINR measurement for each of the plurality of sectors or the plurality of paths comprises an average of SINR measurements.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the corrective action comprises filtering adjacent signals, adjusting gain of an uplink, filtering interference signals, utilizing diversity signal paths, adjusting a pilot signal, adjusting transmit parameters, adjusting receive parameters, adjusting a modulation scheme, adjusting a coding scheme, adjusting a position of an antenna to shape coverage, or any combination thereof.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein an interference component of the SINR measurement is based on measurements of signals that exceed an inter-cell threshold.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the inter-cell threshold comprises an average of inter-cell signal measurements, and wherein the inter-cell threshold is above a thermal noise level.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the cell site initiates the corrective action without regard to a reduction in a SINR measurement of another cell site, and wherein the cell site comprises a wireless base station or a wireless access point.

12. A cell site, comprising:

a processor; and

a memory that stores executable instructions that, when executed by the processor, facilitate performance of operations, comprising;

determining a first threshold from a first baseline average power obtained across a frequency range and across a plurality of sectors or a plurality of paths of the cell site;

obtaining Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR) measurements from the plurality of sectors or the plurality of paths of the cell site;

detecting a SINR measurement of the SINR measurements that is below the first threshold;

identifying an affected sector of the plurality of sectors or an affected path of the plurality of paths from which the SINR measurement was obtained;

initiating corrective action to improve the SINR measurement;

determining a second threshold from a second baseline average power obtained over the frequency range and across the plurality of sectors or the plurality of paths of the cell site; and

determining whether the corrective action has improved the SINR measurement according to the second threshold.

13. The cell site of claim 12, wherein the operations further comprise determining whether the corrective action has reduced the SINR measurement of one or more other sectors of the plurality of sectors or one or more other paths of the plurality of paths.

14. The cell site of claim 12, wherein the operations further comprise reversing at least in part the corrective action responsive to determining that a SINR measurement of one or more other sectors of the plurality of sectors or one or more other paths of the plurality of paths has been reduced.

15. The cell site of claim 12, wherein the operations further comprise reversing at in part the corrective action responsive to determining that the corrective action has not improved the SINR measurement of the affected sector or the affected path.

16. The cell site of claim 12, wherein the operations further comprise reversing at in part the corrective action responsive to determining that the corrective action has marginally improved the SINR measurement of the affected sector or the affected path.

17. The cell site of claim 12, wherein the cell site initiates the corrective action without regard to a reduction in a SINR measurement of another cell site, and wherein the cell site comprises a wireless base station or a wireless access point.

18. A non-transitory machine-readable storage medium, comprising executable instructions that, when executed by a processor, facilitate performance of operations, comprising:

determining a first threshold from a first baseline average power obtained across a frequency range and across a plurality of sectors or a plurality of paths of a cell site;

obtaining performance measurements from the plurality of sectors or the plurality of paths of the cell site;

determining that a first performance measurement from the performance measurements is below the first threshold;

identifying an affected sector of the plurality of sectors or an affected path of the plurality of paths from which the first performance measurement was obtained;

detecting that an initial performance measurement of the affected sector or the affected path was reduced due to corrective action initiated by the cell site for a first sector of the plurality of sectors or a first path of the plurality of paths to improve a performance measurement of the first sector or the first path, wherein the first sector differs from the affected sector, and wherein the first path differs from the affected path; and

reversing at least in part the corrective action of the first sector or the first path to improve the first performance measurement of the affected sector or the affected path.

19. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 18, wherein the operations further comprise determining whether the first performance measurement of the affected sector or the affected path has improved.

20. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 18, wherein the performance measurements comprise signal to interference plus noise ratio measurements.

21. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 20, wherein one or more noise figures of the signal to interference plus noise ratio measurements comprises thermal noise, in-band co-channel interference, adjacent band noise, interference from foreign cell sites, out-of-band noise, or any combinations thereof.

22. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 18, wherein the cell site initiates the corrective action without regard to a reduction in a SINR measurement of another cell site.

23. A method, comprising:

determining, by a communication system including a processor, a first performance threshold from a first baseline average power obtained across a plurality of communication paths used by the communication system;

obtaining, by the communication system, performance measurements for each of the plurality of communication paths used by the communication system;

determining, by the communication system, whether one or more of the performance measurements are below the first performance threshold;

initiating, by the communication system, corrective action to improve a performance measurement of an affected path of the plurality of communication paths responsive to the performance measurement of the affected path falling below the first performance threshold;

determining a second performance threshold from a second baseline average power obtained over the plurality of communication paths used by the communication system; and

determining, by the communication system, whether the corrective action has improved the performance measurement of the affected path according to the second performance threshold.

24. The method of claim 23, wherein the communication system comprises a wireless base station, a wireless access point, or a mobile communication device.

25. The method of claim 23, wherein the performance measurements comprise Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR) measurements.

26. The method of claim 23, wherein the performance measurements comprise Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) measurements.

27. The method of claim 23, further comprising:

obtaining uplink performance measurements for an uplink of the affected path, wherein the uplink is used for receiving first data from communication devices; and

adjusting operational parameters relating to a downlink of the affected path according to the uplink performance measurements, wherein the downlink is used for transmitting second data to the communication devices.

28. The method of claim 27, wherein the uplink performance measurements comprise noise data, interference mitigation data, or a combination thereof, and wherein the noise data comprises thermal noise, in-band co-channel interference, adjacent band noise, interference from foreign systems, out-of-band noise, or any combinations thereof.

29. The method of claim 23, further comprising:

obtaining downlink performance measurements for an downlink of the affected path, wherein the downlink is used for receiving first data from communication devices; and

adjusting operational parameters relating to an uplink of the affected path according to the downlink performance measurements, wherein the uplink is used for receiving second data from the communication devices.

30. The method of claim 29, wherein the downlink performance measurements comprise a resource block schedule, gain data associated with the downlink, antenna orientation information, or any combinations thereof.

31. The method of claim 27, wherein the performance measurements comprise key performance indicators (KPIs).

32. The method of claim 31, wherein the KPIs comprise network traffic, data throughput, ineffective connection attempts by communication devices to establish a communication session with a cell site, uplink and downlink data volume, or any combinations thereof.