EMPFANGSSIGNALSTÄRKE BESTIMMUNGSVERFAHREN, GERÄT UND RECHNERPROGRAMMPRODUKTE

摘要

A signal strength for a received signal such as a radio signal transmitted over a wireless network is determined based on a large number of sample measurements of the received signal which may be taken over disjoint time intervals. Each sample is digitized so as to take on one of a discrete number of values, for example, 256 possible values for an 8-bit converter. The number of occurrences for each of the values is accumulated in bins (counters) and the indication of signal strength is determined by a summation of the measured values based on processing of the counts rather than the sample measurements themselves. The signal strength measurements are provided as monotonically related values, more particularly, logarithmic magnitude representations of the measured signal strength of each sample measurement. Bin counts are reduced iteratively by replacing counts greater than 1 by incrementing the count of a proportionately higher value bin until only counts of 1 or zero remain. These counts are then combined to provide only a single counter with a non-zero count value which indicates the accumulated signal strength of the signal strength measurements. The invention may further be provided using single bit memory elements and byte processing with look-up tables to provide even more efficient processing of the logarithmic signal strength measurements to reduce power consumption for battery powered devices such as cellular radiotelephones.