Patent ID: 8195240
Filing Date: 2012-06-05
Classification: H04W

Abstract:
1. A method comprising: dividing a region in which a first communication device wirelessly communicates with one or more of a plurality of second communication devices into a plurality of segments; assigning respective ones of the second communication devices to a group of the segments; monitoring locations of the second communication devices and adjusting assignment of the second communication devices to the segments based on the monitoring; generating beamforming antenna weights that are configured to produce a radiation beam pattern from a plurality of antennas of the first communication device to respective ones of each of the plurality of segments in the region; and transmitting a broadcast message from the first communication device to each segment of the region in a time-division multiplexed manner using the beamforming antenna weights associated with the radiation beam pattern for the corresponding segment such that the broadcast message is not transmitted during the same time interval to segments of different regions that are immediately adjacent to each other, and if the segments of different regions share a common boundary, a size of the common boundary is smaller than that of a common boundary of a region without segmentation so as to reduce inter-region interference of broadcast messages.