Patent ID: 8798620

Claim:
A method for estimating an available capacity of a base station within a wireless communication access network, the method comprising: computing, using an apparatus disposed outside of a core network of the base station, an indication of a quality of communication between the base station and a mobile terminal, the indication being based on (i) a signal transmitted by the base station and received by the mobile terminal, and (ii) correlation outputs corresponding to a plurality of scrambling codes; and estimating, using the apparatus, the available capacity of the base station based on the computed indication, wherein the computing comprises computing the indication using a neighboring cell search, the neighboring cell search comprising: detecting one of the correlation outputs between the received signal and a scrambling code assigned to the base station; detecting a plurality of the correlation outputs between the received signal and corresponding ones of scrambling codes assigned to neighboring cells; identifying a maximum of the detected correlation outputs, the maximum correlation output being associated with a corresponding one of the scrambling codes; determining a minimum of the correlation outputs; and computing the indication as a ratio of the minimum correlation output to the maximum correlation output.