Subscriber unit and method of cell selection for a cellular communication system

Abstract

The current invention relates to a cellular communication system. Known communication systems performs cell selection based on measurements of downlink pilot signal levels. However, this is inefficient as uplink conditions can have significant impact on the performance. In the current invention a subscriber unit (300) comprises receiving means (305) for receiving uplink characteristics information transmitted from a target set of base stations (201,203). The subscriber unit (300) further comprises base station selection means (309) for determining at least one serving base station in response to said uplink characteristics information, and transmitting means (311) for accessing the cellular communication system through said at least one serving base station. Preferably, the subscriber unit (300) comprises means for calculating an access message transmit power level and the base station having the lowest calculated access message transmit power level is selected. The invention is particularly applicable to 3rd generation cellular communication systems such as UMTS.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.