Method and apparatus for wireless communication system organization

Abstract

A level of system self-organization in a wireless communication system is provided using a combined design, planning and verification process to determine system organization parameters. The process determines the parameters based on a measured path loss-related characteristic, such as path loss or bit error rate, between base stations and a plurality of regions in a coverage area. For each region, the characteristic is measured to each base station irrespective of the proximity between the region and the base stations. The measured characteristics enable the prediction of signal strength received at the regions of signals transmitted by the base stations independent of the region location. Accordingly, the characteristics can be measured without information correlating the absolute geographic locations of the regions. The resulting unique characterization of the path loss-related information can be used to determine a variety of system organization parameters, such as the number and transmission power of base stations, neighbor lists, sets of base stations that can reuse channels and the identity of base stations, if any, that can be omitted from the system.