Patent ID: 11902188
Assignee: SPRINT SPECTRUM LP
Field: Digital communication (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H | IPC H

Claim 16:
17. A method for selecting wireless devices for pairing in a cellular network, the method comprising:
determining, based on a channel condition criteria and a channel orthogonality criteria for one or more wireless devices, that the one or more wireless devices can be served by a first access node for uplink (UL) multi-user multiple-input-multiple-output (MU-MIMO);
prioritizing the one or more wireless devices served by the first access node for ULMU-MIMO pairing;
determining that at least one of the one or more prioritized wireless devices is in a location within a coverage area of a second access node and has underlying coverage deployed by the second access node;
de-prioritizing the at least one prioritized wireless device, based on the location of the at least one prioritized device in the underlying coverage deployed by the second access node, for selection as a UL MU-MIMO wireless device;
pairing remaining prioritized wireless devices to share a same set of resource blocks; and
serving the at least one de-prioritized wireless device by one of (a) handing over the at least one de-prioritized wireless device to the second access node; or (b) distributing remaining resource blocks from the first access node to the at least one de-prioritized wireless device.