Patent ID: 9474030
Filing Date: 2016-10-18
CPC Classification: H04W

Claim Text:
1. A method for use in a heterogeneous telecommunications system, said heterogeneous telecommunications system comprising a macro base station and a low-power base station, the low-power base station having a coverage which is extendible by range expansion (RE) to serve a user equipment that would otherwise have been served by the macro base station, the method comprising, in either of the macro base station or the low-power base station: obtaining information about radio conditions of the user equipment at least with respect to the macro base station; determining, based on the obtained information, whether a criterion for conditional range expansion is satisfied, said criterion being related to an uplink transmission power of the user equipment to the macro base station; and applying range expansion for the user equipment only when the criterion is satisfied, wherein applying range expansion for the user equipment involves sending a control message to the user equipment, said control message causes the user equipment to apply a certain offset to a received downlink signal strength for the low-power base station so as to change a low-power base station's uptake area in a user equipment's cell-selecting mechanism, further wherein the offset applied to the received downlink signal strength for the low-power base station has a positive value, which serves to increase the low-power base station's uptake area compared to a case where no offset is applied.