Lucent Technologies Inc.

At&t Bell Laboratories

Bell Telephone Laboratories

American Telephone and Telegraph, Co.

High Point Sarl

Kenneth Frank Smolik

Douglas A Spencer

Kenneth Wayne Strom

John S Thompson

Jeffrey Arthur Zahnle

Alan S Mulberg

Nicholas John Gnesda

Kelvin K Ho

Talmage P Bursh, Jr

Brian D Bolliger

LaJeana N Roberts

David James Thomson

Richard Alan Windhausen

Charles Y Farwell

Richard D Miller

Kenneth Yiu-Kwong Ho

Paul E Miller

Michael A Smith

Michel L Hearn

Ross McPherson

David M Kissel

Richard M Heidebrecht

Michael J English

Shawn S Yu

Marc K Dennison

Alan Stuart Mulberg

Charles Yeomans Farwell

Richard Michael Heidebrecht

Lajeana Nicole Roberts

Paul Eugene Miller

Richard Dale Miller

Michael Adrian Smith

Michel Lee Hearn

John Stewart Thompson

Marc Kevin Dennison

David Michael Kissel

Michael Jerome English

Brian David Bolliger

Lajeana Nicole Robert

Nicholas J Gnesda

Douglas Albert Spencer

Talmage P Bursh

Kelvin Ki-Yui Ho

John Stuart Thompson

The present invention retunes adjustable base station antennas of a wireless communications system in order to improve performance metrics that are determined by measurements and that are associated with sub-sectors within the wireless communications system. The present invention calculates and applies control signals to the adjustable antennas to improve the performance in accordance with the performance metrics. Thus, the present invention obviates much of the labor that is required for retuning the wireless communications system with changing radio conditions.

Apparatus and method for measuring and controlling the performance or an adjustable antenna on a sub-sector basis

The present invention bills a call in accordance with a measured quality of service (QoS) level afforded by the call and specified in a service level agreement. The measured quality of service is determined from a collection of measurements associated with the call. An adjustment factor is determined by a subscriber class of service and the measured quality of service. The adjustment factor is utilized by a billing processor in rating the call.

Method and apparatus for policy-based charging for telecommunications services

The system for increasing the call capacity of a wireless communications system degrades voice quality of the communications connections within a predetermined limit in order to increase the efficiency of the available RF spectrum as measured by the call carrying capacity of this allocated RF spectrum. This is accomplished by adjusting the transmission rate of the speech coder at the mobile subscriber unit and/or the speech coder that may be located at the mobile switching center so that the call carrying capacity of the wireless communications system is therefore increased. Additionally, the situation of call blocking is monitored to determine if frame error rate targets should be adjusted to further increase the call capacity. At times when the wireless system is not experiencing peak usage, the voice quality is restored to normal levels. The term &ldquo;mobile subscriber unit&rdquo; does not imply that the mobile unit is restricted to a moving vehicle. The present state of the art includes the use of mobile subscriber units in fixed wireless applications as an alternative to traditional wire telephony services.

System for increasing the call capacity of a wireless communication system

A system and method are disclosed for providing a warning of, and greater immunity from, an impending call drop in a digital wireless telecommunications system. During normal operations, data is transmitted at an initial information frame rate and a corresponding initial physical frame rate. Upon the data transmission producing errors in excess of a threshold, which indicates an impending call drop, the initial information frame rate is reduced while error correction codes are introduced into the data transmission to maintain the initial physical frame rate. The reduction in the information frame rate produces a subtle yet noticeable change in acoustic voice quality, which serves as a warning of the impending call drop. The introduction of error correction codes into the transmission provides greater immunity to the impending call drop by improving data integrity.

System and method for warning of and providing greater immunity from an impeding call drop in a digital wireless system

The system for automated determination of handoff neighbor list uses the data collected from mobile subscriber units to automatically update the handoff neighbor list. The mobile subscriber unit produces Pilot Strength Measurement (PSM) data that is indicative of the relative signal strength measured at the mobile subscriber unit from a plurality of pilot channels. The mobile subscriber unit transmits this data, along with a list of viable pilot channel candidates as determined by the mobile subscriber unit, to the base station serving the existing call. The system for automated determination of handoff neighbor list maintains a data structure that stores data indicative of the number of instances that a pilot channel is recommended, the sum of power levels that were measured by the various mobile subscriber units for these instances. This data is processed to determine a metric for each data structure in the list, with the metric in the present embodiment being a function of the number of occurrences multiplied by a weighting factor summed with the sum of power levels.

System for automated determination of handoff neighbor list for cellular

A CDMA cellular radio-telephone system (FIG. 2) comprises a packet-switched communications network (202, 207, 201) that interconnects cells (base stations; 202) with each other and with the public telephone network (100). A unique combination of a static addressing plan that uses a different LAPD DLCI (302 in FIG. 7) for each unidirectional virtual call path, direct cell (202)-to-cell and cell-to-call-processing unit (264 in FIG. 5) control information exchanges, and packet-switching techniques that permit call traffic and control communications to share call paths and permit different call paths to share physical resources, is applied to call processing. This enables soft handoffs (FIGS. 27-29) to be handled in a manner transparent to the parties to the call and without significant involvement of system control elements (134 and 261 in FIG. 2) whose involvement would adversely impact the system's call-handling capacity. It also enables soft handoffs to occur without change of the call processing unit that is handling the call, so that a single call processing unit continues to handle the call from start to finish through even multiple soft handoffs.

Mobile telephone system call processing arrangement

A wireless-access communications system, such as a CDMA cellular radio-telephone system (FIG. 2), comprises a packet-switched communications network (202, 207, 201) that interconnects cells (base stations; 202) with each other and with the public telephone network (100). Traffic of individual calls is packetized, and packet-bearing frames (300 in FIG. 7) of a plurality of calls are then statistically multiplexed and frame-relayed through the network to yield the high capacity, efficiency, and speed of traffic transport and handoff required for a CDMA cellular system. At each call processing unit (264 in FIG. 5), individual calls are handled by individual service circuits (602 and 612) which perform speech-processing functions such as coding and decoding, tone insertion, and echo cancellation, and packet-to-circuit-switched-PCM traffic conversion. Processors (602) adapt call processing unit timing to compensate for asynchrony between cells and call processing units and variations in call path transmission delays. Cell-to-cell communications, fixed call path addressing, and packetized control message transfers ensure that the same service circuit handles a call through even multiple soft handoffs (FIGS. 27-29) and efficiently communicates simultaneously with all cells involved in the handoff without involvement of system control entities and negative effect on system call-handling capacity. Both coded (packet-switched) and uncoded (circuit-switched) radio-telephone traffic are accommodated side-by-side. Wherever possible, existing and proven technology and component units are used to achieve low cost and high reliability.

Wireless access telephone-to-telephone network interface architecture

Supervisory audio tones received from a mobile telephone unit are converted from analog to digital form. The tone is then converted to a complex number by bifurcating the tone path and multiplying one path by a sine function and the other path by a cosine function. The complex numbers are accumulated and the frequencies where significant power exists is found using the discrete Fourier transform. If the power at an assigned frequency exceeds a threshold, the corresponding supervisory audio tone is declared to have been detected.

Supervisory audio tone detection in a radio channel

Received baseband data signals, in the form of signals having at least one level transition per symbol indicative of symbol information state, are sampled (17) at a rate much higher than the symbol rate. The samples are used to control the direction of counting (20) of local clock (12) signals recurring at that higher rate during symbol subintervals of predetermined duration. Counts produced during adjacent subintervals are processed (FIGS. 4 and 5) to produce several different results such as recognition of the start of an asynchronously occurring data message, acquisition and tracking of symbol phase in the message, and detection of symbol information states.

Signal characteristic state detector using interval-count processing

Growing community of inventors

Naperville, IL, United States of America

Kenneth Frank Smolik