Method for reconfiguring base station equipment to relieve blocking in a heavily utilized cell sector

Abstract

A method is disclosed for adapting base station equipment at a sectorized cell site to relieve high call blocking rates in a first heavily utilized sector. The method includes selecting a TCB cabinet corresponding to a second more sparsely utilized sector and placing first sector transceivers in a first set of designated slots of the TCB cabinet and second sector. A split receive (uplink) signal path within the second sector TCB cabinet is achieved by substituting a four input port combiner card for a conventional two input port combiner card. First and second sector receive signals are respectively directed to first and second input port pairs of the combiner card and are separately routed by the TCB cabinet backplane circuitry to the first and second sector transceivers. The foregoing method allows the cell site owner to add needed transceivers to the heavily-utilized sector without purchasing and installing a new base station.