Patent ID: 8811993

Claim:
A method of saving radio resources during handover of a user equipment between cells in a communication network system, wherein each cell is served by a respective communication network node, wherein said handover is made from a source cell to one of a plurality of target cells included in a neighbor cell list, and wherein the method comprises: collecting long term handover statistics describing past handovers to one or more target cells included in the neighbor cell list; checking if a triggering condition is fulfilled for selectively triggering multiple target cells to prepare for the handoff; if the triggering condition is not fulfilled, preparing one primary target cell included in the neighbor cell list for the handover; and if the triggering condition is fulfilled: defining, based on the long term handover statistics, a secondary target cell list that includes one or more secondary target cells to be prepared for the handoff, in case handoff to the primary target cell fails, adding a secondary target cell to the secondary target cell list if a cell addition condition is fulfilled and excluding a secondary target cell from the secondary target cell list if a cell exclusion condition is fulfilled, to thereby exclude secondary target cells that, as indicated by the long term handover statistics, are rarely used for handoff; and preparing the secondary target cells included in the secondary target cell list for the handover by sending handover request messages to those secondary target cells.