Methods and apparatuses for decoupling uplink and downlink in a mobile communications network

摘要

A base station method comprises: on receipt of an indication that user equipment being served by another base station is identified for soft handover with the base station, monitoring characteristics of an uplink from the user equipment; and, when the characteristics meet specified criteria, transmitting a coupling-decoupling instruction configured to cause the user equipment to utilise uplink and downlink decoupling by establishing uplink with the base station whilst maintaining a downlink with the another base station. In this way, rather than any coupling-decoupling operation occurring based on downlink transmissions, which may be misleading due to the presence of an uplink-downlink imbalance zone in, for example, a HetNet, instead a decision on whether to perform an uplink and downlink decoupling operation is instead decided based on the characteristics of the uplink to the base station.