METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR MITIGATING CELL OUTAGE

摘要

Cell outage within a wireless communication network is automatically mitigated. This way, neither manual operator intervention nor manual base station reconfiguration is needed to cover problematic cells. Quality of wireless services provided by the network improves when cell outage is automatically mitigated. In one embodiment, cell outage is mitigated in a wireless communication network by automatically communicating cell status messages between radio base stations or within a node that controls the radio base stations (300) indicating whether one or more cells within the network are currently disabled or expected to be disabled. The coverage area of one or more preexisting cells is modified to cover those cells which are currently disabled or expected to be disabled as indicated by the cell status messages (302). The inter-base station interface can also be used to send messages directly between the base stations indicating addition of new cells or deletion of preexisting cells.