Patent ID: 8588832

Claim:
A method of operating a small base station corresponding to a target terminal, the method comprising: receiving a request for a protection mode from a neighbor base station based on at least one of an amount of interference resulting from communication from the small base station to the target terminal or an amount of interference resulting from communication from the target terminal to the small base station; implementing the protection mode to protect a neighbor terminal from interference regardless of whether the neighbor base station corresponding to the neighbor terminal is performing a process to protect the neighbor terminal from the interference; and performing a rate-splitting-precoding process or a dirty-paper-coding based precoding process to protect the neighbor terminal from the interference upon implementing the protection mode, wherein: a part of the neighbor terminal's transmission traffic information is received to perform the rate-splitting-precoding process; and all of the neighbor terminal's transmission traffic information is received to perform the dirty-paper-coding based precoding process.