SECTORIZED SMART ANTENNA SYSTEM AND METHOD

摘要

A sectorized smart antenna system includes multiple sector antennas (204-211) with a software control algorithm for flexible association of physical association of physical antennas to a logical serving sector to provide signal coverage in a particular region of the cell (222-229) served by the base station (202). The control algorithm can adapt to different situations without requiring any, or only very limited, physical hardware changes to reconfigure a base station (202) to balance the traffic load throughout the cell (200). The smart antenna system and method includes measuring and recording a mobile station's signal strengths and its rate of changes received by an antenna in a serving sector relative to other antennas in either the same serving sector or different serving sector to determine the mobile station location and its movement, determining when a threshold signal level is reached, and handing-off the mobile station (240, 250, 260) to an adjacent antenna, serving sector or cell.