Patent ID: 8219095

Claim:
A base station for a cellular communication system, the base station comprising: means for receiving measurement reports from a plurality of user equipments served by the base station, the measurement reports comprising receive signal quality indications for neighbour cells of the base station; overlap means for determining an amount of cell overlap with a first neighbour cell, the amount of cell overlap based on a proportion of the receive signal quality indications, for a first base station supporting the first neighbor cell that meets a first criterion; and control means for performing handover control in response to the amount of cell overlap; wherein the overlap means is arranged to generate amounts of cell overlap for a first base station for a plurality of communication service types having different Quality of Service requirements; and wherein the control means is arranged to perform handover for a first communication service in response to an amount of cell overlap for a communication service type corresponding to a communication service type for the first communication service; wherein the control means is further arranged to select a subset of neighbour base stations from the plurality of neighbour base stations as base stations meeting a handover criterion and to select the different base station as a base station of the subset of neighbour base stations in response to at least one of the amounts of Cell overlap of the subset of neighbour base stations.