Patent ID: 8964777
Filing Date: 2015-02-24
Classification: H04L,H04W

Abstract:
1. In a radio communication system comprising a first base station configured to assign a portion of time division radio resources to blank time slots and a plurality of second base stations configured to communicate with terminals using radio resources including the blank time slots, a base station, for use as said first base station, the base station comprising: a receiver configured to receive from a plurality of second base stations or a management device required blank time slots per second base station calculated so that the number of required blank time slots will increase with an increase in the number of terminals located near a cell edge between the first base station and the second base station, according to an indicator for evaluating an amount of interference experienced by the terminals based on information representing radio channel conditions or signal quality metrics reported from the terminals for each second base station; and a change determination unit configured to determine whether to change blank time slots provided by the first base station, based on the respectively required blank time slots, and increase or decrease the blank time slots when having determined to change the blank time slots, wherein the first base station, based on a plurality of notifications of required blank time slots received within a given period of time, is configured to determine whether to change blank time slots provided by the first base station according to a majority decision between the number of requests to increase the required blank time slots more than the current blank time slots and the number of requests to decrease the required blank time slots less than the current blank time slots.