Patent ID: 9461917
Filing Date: 2016-10-04
CPC Classification: H04L,H04W,Y02D

Claim Text:
1. A method comprising: determining that a quality-of-service (QOS) load of a first base station exceeds a QOS load high threshold, wherein the QOS load of the first base station represents an extent to which a traffic capacity of the first base station is assigned to one or more wireless communication devices (WCDs) served by the first base station; determining that a set of WCDs served by the first base station are located within a geographic area nearby a second base station, wherein the second base station is powered off, wherein the geographic area is defined by the wireless coverage of the second base station when the second base station is powered on, and wherein the first and second base stations are components of a radio access network (RAN); in response to determining that (i) the QOS load of the first base station exceeds the QOS load high threshold, and (ii) the set of WCDs are located within the geographic area, determining that the set of WCDs are responsible for at least a predefined portion of the QOS load of the first base station, wherein a particular QOS load of a particular WCD served by the first base station is based on (i) a recently-measured or projected air interface signal-to-noise ratio of the particular WCD, and (ii) a minimum air interface bit rate guaranteed to the particular WCD by the RAN; and in response to determining that the set of WCDs are responsible for at least the predefined portion of the QOS load of the first base station, powering on the second base station.