Patent ID: 7634277

Claim:
A method comprising: at a base station that serves a corresponding cell in a wireless communication network comprising a plurality of cells, allocating at least one primary channel such that the primary channel of the cell is different from that of its neighboring cell served by another base station; at the base station, allocating one or more secondary channels for its cell, wherein each of the one or more secondary channels for respective ones of the plurality of cells is associated with a corresponding primary channel and has the same frequency as its corresponding primary channel, and wherein within the cell the frequency of the secondary channel is different from the frequency of the primary channel; at the base station, receiving from at least one terminal that it serves a channel performance report indicating performance on the secondary channel, and an indication of actual usage of the secondary channel and interference on the secondary channel; at the base station, generating a merit score for its secondary channel based on the channel performance report received from the at least one terminal and actual usage on the secondary channel, wherein generating the merit score comprises generating over a period of time that is longer than a transmission frame length, a first value representing actual usage of the secondary channel as measured by the at least one terminal and a second value representing an amount of time that performance on the secondary channel is poor based on the channel performance report; and at the base station, determining whether to activate the secondary channel based on a comparison of the first and second values with a threshold.