Femtocell discovery and association in cellular networks
AssigneeIntel Corporation
InventorsSassan Ahmadi, Shahrnaz Azizi
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Embodiments of a method and apparatus for discovery and association, by a mobile station, of a femto base station from a plurality of base stations. The mobile station may select a base station for consideration for association by decoding a physical layer identifier to determine that the base station is a macro base station and select a different base station based on other considerations. Other embodiments may be described and claimed.
Claims17
A method performed by a mobile station for discovery and association, of a femto base station (BS) from a plurality of base stations, the method comprising:
- selecting a first of the base stations for consideration for discovery and association by the mobile station;
- decoding a cell ID sequence associated with the first base station;
- and
- based on a determination, from the cell ID sequence, that the first base station is a macro base station, and further based on a determination that the mobile station prefers a femto base station:
- refraining from determining that the first base station is a Closed Subscriber Group (CSG) femto base station, and
- selecting a further one of the base stations for consideration for discovery and association.
A method for improved handover of a mobile station, by a first base station to a second base station from a plurality of base stations, the base stations including at least one CSG femto base station, the method comprising:
- broadcasting a mobile neighbor advertisement message by the first base station;
- and
- restricting the mobile neighbor advertisement message to exclude the at least one CSG femto base stations.
A mobile station to operate in a wireless packet-carrying network, the mobile station comprising:
- a physical layer circuit to receive and decode a cell ID sequence associated with the first one of a plurality of base stations;
- a MAC layer circuit coupled to the physical layer circuit, to receive and decode a BS ID;
- and
- a processing circuit coupled to the physical layer circuit, to select a first of the base stations for consideration for discovery and association by the mobile station, and to determine from the cell ID sequence, that the first base station is a macro base station, and further based on a determination that the mobile station prefers a femto base station:
- to refrain from determining that the first base station is a CSG femto base station, and
- to select a further one of the base stations for consideration for discovery and association.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.