Expanding the scope of coverage of wireless cellular telephone systems into regions beyond the cellular array areas by proliferating the installation of transmission repeaters into automobiles that may be randomly driven within these regions

摘要

If RF transmission repeater units could be mounted in as many automobiles as possible, particularly automobiles owned by drivers residing in low population regions, the likelihood would increase that there could be established wireless transmission paths between a wireless telephone unit and cellular array base stations, including a set of at least one automobile mounted repeater unit intermediate and independent of said wireless telephone unit and said base station. With enough automobiles with mounted repeaters travelling in the remoter regions, there would be a reasonable likelihood that such sequential sets of repeaters connecting to base towers of adjacent cellular arrays could be randomly established. The situation could occur that two or more alternate paths could be establishable between a cellular telephone and cell base stations via two different sets of repeaters. In such a case, as set forth hereinafter in greater detail, there are likely to be different cell base stations, each for a different path. In such a case, any conflict could be resolved by selecting the path having the best transmission attributes. This conflict could readily be resolved through conventional cellular telephone system technology that switches moving cell phones within cellular array areas that “hand-off” or switch a moving cell phone as it moves from conventional cell to cell. This hand-off is based upon attributes like signal-to-noise ratio or strength of signal.