ADVANCED HANDOVER FOR ADAPTIVE ANTENNAS

摘要

Handover is a main function that is used to support mobility in the network. In a cellular communication network having adaptive antennas for enabling narrow beam operation, it is assumed that a mobile unit is served by an active cell set (S1). A basic idea according to the present invention is to select, prior to establishment of a new serving radio link for a mobile unit, a narrow target beam within a neighbor area of the current active cell set of the mobile unit based on pre-established information of narrow beams within the neighbor area (S2), and to initiate establishment of the new serving radio link directly with the selected narrow target beam (S3). In this way, the narrow target beam can be selected at handover initiation and the new radio link can be established directly with a target narrow beam without first establishing the radio link with a cell-wide beam and then, after uplink measurements, reconfiguring the radio link onto a narrow beam.