HANDOFF MONITORING IN CELLULAR COMMUNICATION NETWORKS USING SLOW FREQUENCY HOPPING

摘要

Methods for handoff in a wireless communication network comprised of a local area networkconnected to a plurality of base stations, each of which has a geographic area, defined as a cell,within which mobile stations can communicate with a base station, with each such base stationbeing capable of performing bidirectional wireless communication with one or more of saidmobile stations under control of a controller, with communication between base stations andmobile stations being performed by frequency hopping, with there being n available frequencyhopping channels in a fixed frequency band, with each channel being of a same fixed durationand having a fixed frequency different than another channel. The handoff method employsstructure and techniques for determining by a mobile station that the quality of transmissionbetween it and a current base station has degraded below a predetermined performance level,structure and technique for said mobile station to listen to each of successive frequency channelsfor a duration substantially less than said fixed duration of a channel until it senses atransmission from another base station, and structure and techniques for transferring control ofsaid mobile station to said another base station in response to the sensed transmission.