Patent ID: 7903580

Claim:
A method comprising: for a sector-carrier in a wireless coverage area in a cellular network, an alert server collecting sets of data over a period of time, wherein each set of data comprises (i) a value indicative of a slot-utilization rate for the sector-carrier in the wireless coverage area and (ii) a value indicative of a total amount of data transmitted to at least one wireless device on the sector-carrier; the alert server selecting a subset of the sets of data; the alert server using the subset of the sets of data in a linear regression to identify an equation for an amount of data transmitted to the at least one wireless device as a function of the slot-utilization rate; the alert server using the equation to calculate a maximum amount of data transmitted to the at least one wireless device on the sector-carrier; the alert server identifying in the collected sets of data a value that represents a specified percentile of the total amount of data transmitted to the at least one wireless device; the alert server calculating a growth factor for the sector-carrier, wherein the growth factor is a ratio between (i) the calculated maximum amount of data transmitted and (ii) the value that represents the specified percentile; and the alert server generating an alert signal based on a comparison of the growth factor with a threshold value.