Patent ID: 8774126

Claim:
A method of performing time-aligned handover of a mobile device between serving and target cells in a wireless communication network, the method executed at a serving access point in the serving cell and comprising: determining, at the serving access point, a time difference between the serving and target cells; determining, at the serving access point, a target propagation delay between the mobile device and the target cell based on the determined time difference; calculating, at the serving access point, a target transmission time towards the mobile device after handover by adding an offset value corresponding to the determined target propagation delay to a transmission time of the target cell; and transmitting the target transmission time from the serving access point to the mobile device for use by the mobile device in performing time-aligned handover, wherein determining the target propagation delay comprises calculating the propagation delay based on the time difference and a serving propagation delay between the mobile device and the serving cell according to δτ t =δτ s −Δμ, where δτ t represents the target propagation delay between the mobile device and the target cell, δτ s represents the serving propagation delay between the mobile device and the serving cell, and Δμ represents the time difference.