Wireless service providers are observing an exponential growth in mobile communications due to both an increase in consumer demand and commercial requirements. To improve indoor wireless coverage, and to offload a mobility radio access network (RAN), wireless service providers are deploying femtocells-building-based wireless access points interfaced with a wired broadband network. Typically, femtocell coverage overlaps with extant macrocell coverage to ensure service continuity as subscriber(s) enters in and exits out of the subscriber(s) home coverage area or private indoor environment. A substantive number, e.g., 102-104, of femtocells can reside within the coverage area of a single macrocell, thus creating a substantively complex handover situation for transitioning from macrocells to femtocells. In view of such high deployment density, handover from macrocell-to-femtocell can readily strain conventional neighbor-handling capabilities such as handover associations of macrocell networks and devices or other solutions for wireless indoor coverage.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds