Patent ID: 11916644
Assignee: BRIDGEWEST FINANCE LLC
Field: Digital communication (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H | IPC H

Claim 0:
1. Apparatus for receiving broadband access via a network of cell sites comprising one or more base stations, each base station comprising a cell radio sub-system installed to a cell antenna sub-system, each base station configured to form at least one directional beam, the apparatus comprising:
a drone radio sub-system having at least a transmitter, a receiver, a processor, and a non-transitory medium readable by the processor;
a position location determination unit; and
a drone antenna sub-system comprising an antenna aperture configured to form a steerable directional beam;
wherein the drone radio sub-system is configured to:
store a plurality of position locations associated with a plurality of cell sites of the network of cell sites;
instruct the drone antenna sub-system to steer a beam toward a specific cell site based on a drone position coordinate and a specific position coordinate of the specific cell site;
measure a downlink signal quality measurement on a received signal from the specific cell site; and
receive uplink signal quality measurements provided within the received signal from the specific cell site, wherein the uplink signal quality measurements are associated with the specific cell site;

wherein the drone radio sub-system is further configured to:
divide a network coverage area into a number of contiguous geographic bins;
maintain a candidate cell site association table with an entry for each one of the number of contiguous geographic bins;
wherein the candidate cell site association table comprises a list of cell sites that are available to establish a communications link based on an uplink or downlink signal quality;
wherein for at least one candidate cell site within the list of cell sites:
measure the downlink signal quality for the at least one candidate cell site, or receive the uplink signal quality from the at least one candidate cell site; and
associate with the at least one candidate cell site based at least in part on the uplink and downlink signal quality.