Patent ID: 7031721

Claim:
A method for avoiding power outages at a base station in cellular systems using variable rate transmission, the method comprising: a) computing a transmission power requirement estimate for every timeslot in at least one future frame; b) identifying timeslots having a transmission power requirement estimate above a predetermined threshold; c) selecting the timeslot having the highest transmission power requirement; d) identifying transport channels within the selected timeslot; e) sorting the identified transport channels first by increasing frame handling priority and second by decreasing related transmission power; f) applying a tag that tentatively indicates that data within a transport channel to which the tag is applied will be discarded and recomputing the transmission power requirement estimate of the selected timeslot for each identified transport channel in the order said transport channels were sorted until the transmission power requirement estimate is equal to or less than a predetermined threshold; g) going in reverse order in which the transport channels were sorted and tentatively removing the tag of each transport channel previously tagged while again recomputing the transmission power requirement estimate after each successive tag is removed to determine whether removal of any of the tags causes the transmission power requirement estimate to exceed the predetermined threshold; and h) refraining from sending the data for any transport channels whose tag removal causes the transmission power requirement estimate to exceed the predetermined threshold.