A CELLULAR COMMUNICATION SYSTEM AND A METHOD OF SIGNALLING THEREFOR

摘要

A cellular communication system (100) comprises base stations (105, 113) which support soft handover communication of uplink data from a first remote station (101). A first base station (105) comprises a scheduler (203) which schedules the uplink data from the first remote station (101). An uplink rate controller (209) sets an uplink data rate for the first remote station (101). A schedule processor (205) determines a future scheduling resource allocation for the first remote station (101) and an uplink rate selector (207) selects the uplink data rate to indicate the future scheduling resource allocation. A second base station (113) comprises an uplink rate processor (303) which detects the uplink data rate from the first remote station (101). A resource estimator (305) estimates a future resource usage for the first remote station (101) in the cell of the second base station (113) in response to the uplink data rate. A scheduler (307) in the second base station may schedule data in response to the estimated future resource usage.