Adjacent-cell assisted redundancy for wireless communication networks

摘要

Included in a wireless communication network having a plurality of base stations capable of communicating with a plurality of mobile stations located in a coverage area of the network is a redundancy controller. The redundancy controller is capable of detecting a failure in one of the base stations. The redundancy controller is also capable of causing one of the other base stations to use a predetermined amount of its total communication capacity to communicate with mobile stations in a coverage area of the failed base station. The redundancy controller may select all base stations having coverage areas nearby to that of the failed base station and cause all those base stations to use an amount of their total communication capacity to communicate with mobile stations in the coverage area of the failed base station.