Expanded carrier capacity in a mobile communications system

Abstract

A mobile communications system includes a plurality of cell segments each allocated primary carriers to carry circuit-switched traffic and packet data carriers for carrying packet-switched traffic. The packet data carriers include two sets of carriers, a main set of carriers and a secondary set of carriers. The main packet data carriers are allocated to corresponding cell segments. The secondary carriers are allocated to high capacity segments, which may be segments having high bursty traffic or segments in which a hierarchical cell structure is implemented. For high bursty cell segments, the main carriers are used to carry control signaling for performing selection or reselection. However, in such high bursty cell segments, the secondary carriers are not used for performing cell segment selection or reselection.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.