Patent ID: 8306539

Claim:
A method for scheduling one or more handover measurements to be performed by a user terminal in a communications system using a plurality of radio access technologies (RATs), wherein the user terminal is in communication with a serving network interface device and is in the neighborhood of one or more neighboring network interface devices, the method comprising: gathering timing information of the one or more neighboring network interface devices; and determining at least one scanning interval using the timing information of the one or more neighboring network interface devices, the at least one scanning interval being a time period during which the user terminal performs the one or more handover measurements by measuring signals of the one or more neighboring network interface devices, wherein the serving network interface device has a frame size of S in units of time, and the one or more neighboring network interface devices belong to k different RATs and include N i network interface devices having a frame size of P i in units of time, wherein i=1, 2, . . . , k, and wherein determining the at least one scanning interval comprises calculating the at least one scanning interval to be ⌈ ( ∑ i = 1 k ⁢ N i ⁢ P i ) + k × ρ S ⌉ in units of frame of the serving network interface device, wherein ρ is a time required for the user terminal to switch from one operation frequency to another operation frequency, and ┌x┐ is a ceiling function which gives the smallest integer greater than x.