Method for determining cell boundary during base station deployment

A method of obtaining, for base station deployment purposes, a determination of whether a wireless handset at a location is inside or outside a cell boundary of a base station, said method comprising the steps of:

• (a) the wireless handset transmitting a test signal from the location, said signal carrying a transmitted test sequence of bits;
• (b) the base station receiving from the wireless handset a received signal carrying a received sequence of bits;
• (c) the base station measuring a received signal strength intensity (RSSI) level for the received signal;
• (d) the base station measuring a high resolution bit error rate (BER) level for the received sequence, with reference to the transmitted test sequence;
• (e) the base station making the determination that the handset is outside the cell boundary if the measured RSSI-level is less than an RSSI threshold;
• (f) the base station making the determination that the handset is outside the cell boundary if the BER-level exceeds a BER threshold;
• and
• (g) the base station indicating the determination;
• wherein the step of the wireless handset transmitting the test signal further comprises the step of scrambling a known test sequence of bits to produce the transmitted test sequence, and wherein the step of the base station measuring a high resolution bit error rate (BER) further comprises the step of extracting a scrambled received sequence of bits from the received signal, and descrambling the scrambled received sequence to produce the received sequence.

A method of obtaining, for base station deployment purposes, a determination of whether a wireless handset at a location is inside or outside a cell boundary of a base station, said method comprising the steps of:

• (a) the wireless handset transmitting a test signal from the location, said signal carrying a transmitted test sequence of bits;
• (b) the base station receiving from the wireless handset a received signal carrying a received sequence of bits;
• (c) the base station measuring a received signal strength intensity (RSSI) level for the received signal;
• (d) the base station measuring a high resolution bit error rate (BER) level for the received sequence, with reference to the transmitted test sequence;
• (e) the base station making the determination that the handset is outside the cell boundary if the measured RSSI-level is less than an RSSI threshold;
• (f) the base station making the determination that the handset is outside the cell boundary if the BER-level exceeds a BER threshold;
• and
• (g) the base station indicating the determination;
• wherein the step of the wireless handset transmitting a test signal includes the step of a user activating the mute feature of the wireless handset thereby resulting in the transmitted test sequence being entirely comprised of zero-bits, and wherein the step of the base station measuring a high resolution BER-level includes the step of counting the number of non-zero bits in the received sequence.

A method of obtaining, for base station deployment purposes, a determination of whether a wireless handset at a location is inside or outside a cell boundary of a base station, said method comprising the steps of:

• the wireless handset transmitting a plurality of test signals from the location, each signal containing a respective transmitted sequence;
• the base station receiving through a receive path a plurality of received signals, each containing a respective received sequence;
• the base station inserting a selectable, known and varying attenuation in the receive path, to generate RDT-attenuated signals;
• the base station estimating an average RSSI-level of the received signals not including the attenuation;
• the base station calculating a high resolution bit error rate (BER) level of each RDT-attenuated signal, with reference to its respective transmitted sequence;
• the base station making the determination on the basis of the average RSSI-level and the calculated BER-levels;
• and
• the base station indicating the determination.

A radio deployment tool (RDT) comprising:

• a wireless handset comprising means for transmitting a test signal containing a transmitted test sequence to the base station;
• and
• a base station comprising means for receiving a received signal from the wireless handset, an RSSI detector for measuring the received signal strength intensity (RSSI) level of the received signal, a processor for calculating a bit error rate (BER) of a received sequence carried by the received signal and for comparing the RSSI and the BER-levels to RSSI and BER thresholds, respectively, in making a determination that the handset is outside a cell boundary of the base station if the RSSI is less than the RSSI threshold and making a determination that the handset is outside a cell boundary of the base station if the BER is greater than the BER threshold, and an indicating device for communicating the determination to a user;
• wherein the wireless handset further comprises a mute button for producing a known test sequence of zero-bits, and a scrambler for scrambling the known test sequence thereby producing the transmitted test sequence, and wherein the base station further comprises a descrambler for descrambling the contents of a scrambled received sequence thereby creating the received sequence, and a processor for counting the number of non-zero bits in the received sequence.