METHOD AND ARRANGEMENT OF CONVERTING A CELLULAR TELECOMMUNICATION SYSTEM

摘要

The present invention relates to a method and an arrangement of converting a cellular telecommunication system. The invention is primarily intended for migration from an analogue cellular mobile telephony system to a digital cellular mobile telephony system while upholding both analog and digital traffic within a given operator allocated frequency band. Thus, the present invention provides a method and an arrangement for converting a cellular telecommunication system of a first type to a cellular telecommunication system of a second type including mobile switching offices, base stations and mobile units. The method comprises the steps of increasing the traffic handling capacity of the first type of system, introducing generic base station equipment capable of supporting both types of system and shifting the radio resource utilization as desired or necessary from the first type of system to the second type of system by reconfigurating the generic base station equipment. The invention preferably includes introducing multi-cell sites comprising phased array antennas having fixed or controllable multilobe properties. Suitably, the step of reconfigurating the generic base station equipment includes reprogramming of software of the base station.