POWER EFFICIENT SMALL BASE STATION SCANNING AND ACQUISITION

摘要

Cellular network may introduce a large number of limited access/limited range ("small") base stations deployed by end-users such as home base nodes (HNBs) or Femtocells that provide access to access terminals (ATs) or user equipment (UE) to a core network. A selective discovery approach enables UE to discover and to use a small base station without wasting power to discover an alien base station or to search when not within range of any open small base station. Discovery can entail location-dependent determination (e.g., macro base station triangulation, global positioning system, local broadcast channel, etc.) of being within range of an open femtocell whose identity was manually learned, accessed via a distributed neighbor list, etc. The UE can advantageously tolerate small changes in location without having to relearn the identity of the femtocell. The type of access afforded is advantageously communicated to end user via a display indicator.