The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 30, 2003
Filed:
Sep. 15, 1999
Raafat Edward Kamel, Westfield, NJ (US);
Martin Howard Meyers, Montclair, NJ (US);
Carl Francis Weaver, Hanover Township, Morris County, NJ (US);
Xiao Cheng Wu, Parsippany, NJ (US);
Lucent Technologies Inc., Murray Hill, NJ (US);
Abstract
A base station in a soft handoff adjusts its transmit power level by a first amount if the base station is participating in a soft handoff and by a second amount if the base station is not participating in the soft handoff, i.e. in simplex mode. The first and second amounts are different. In one embodiment of the invention, the adjustment is performed by using a down-step size that is larger in magnitude than an up-step size when the base station is in soft handoff. The transmit power level is then adjusted by the smaller up and larger down step sizes when the base station receives an indication to adjust the transmit power level. The step sizes used when the base station is in simplex mode is larger than the up-step size and smaller than the down step size. In another embodiment, when the base station is in soft handoff, the adjustment is performed by adjusting the transmit power level by the same step size as used during simplex mode when the base station receives an indication to adjust the transmit power level and then reducing the result by a reduction amount. The order of these two steps can be reversed, and the transmit power level can be first reduced by the reduction amount and then adjusted by the same step sizes as used during simplex mode. The reduction amount has a magnitude greater than zero and smaller than the step size. The method of adjusting the base station transmit power level by different amounts based on whether the base station participating in a soft handoff can be used with the method of programming each base station in a soft handoff with a threshold power level to constrain the power transmitted by the base station on the forward link. When the threshold power level is a minimum-threshold power level, each base station maintains its transmit power level at or above the minimum-threshold power level. When the threshold power level is a maximum-threshold power level, each base station maintains its transmit power level at or below the maximum-threshold power level. The threshold power level can be either an adjustable or a fixed threshold power level.