Patent ID: 7684373

Claim:
A method of determining coverage of a wireless communication system, comprising: obtaining at least one received signal quality estimate for at least one base station selected for data transmission; deriving a first metric based on the at least one received signal quality estimate for the at least one base station; obtaining a plurality of pilot strength estimates for a plurality of base stations in the system; deriving a second metric based on the plurality of pilot strength estimates for the plurality of base stations; and determining whether to switch from the at least one base station to a second base station based on the first metric and the second metric, wherein the deriving the first metric comprises: determining a rate for data transmission for each time interval based on the at least one received signal quality estimate obtained for the at least one base station for the time interval; ascertaining an average percentage of time non-null rates are determined, and computing the first metric based on the average percentage of time for non-null rates.