Charles W Sanders

US Patent:

8335503, Dec 18, 2012

Filed:

Feb 23, 2009

Appl. No.:

12/390755

Inventors:

Christopher Michael Desmond - Yardley PA, US
Alicia Lauren Aull - Bedminster NJ, US
Charles Albert Sanders - Bridgewater NJ, US
Michael Kearns - Bethleham Township PA, US
Eugene A. Carucci - Oxford NJ, US

Assignee:

Cellco Partnership - Basking Ridge NJ

International Classification:

H04W 24/00

US Classification:

4554221, 455 633, 455 62, 455 71, 455113, 4551501, 4551611, 4551821, 4551901, 4551541, 370343, 370330, 370302

Abstract:

In an idle state transition from a macro mobile network to a femtocell, a mobile station looks for the femtocell to operate in a frequency band typically assigned to a macro network. For normal macro network operations, mobile stations look for base stations operating on various channels, e. g. based on hashing of respective mobile station identifiers. Femtocells generate a pilot beacon on a carrier frequency to enable mobile station acquisition, e. g. to redirect a mobile station to the operating frequency of the femtocell. To avoid the need to continually cycle or hop through all possible macro assigned carrier frequencies, pilot beacon transmissions of a particular femtocell are prioritized to correspond to the mobile station(s) expected to utilize that femtocell, e. g. by using existing network information, provisioning device information or self learning/calculating information regarding the carrier most likely to be used by any particular mobile station expected to use the femtocell.