Patent ID: 7742453

Claim:
A method of conditioning removal of an overlay carrier frequency from at least a given wireless coverage area among a group of wireless coverage areas in a wireless communication system, the method comprising: based on collected handoff data for the wireless communication system, identifying inbound soft handoffs (SHOs) to the overlay carrier frequency of the given wireless coverage area over time and identifying outbound hard handoffs (HHOs) from the overlay carrier frequency of the given wireless coverage area over time; predicting how many of the identified SHOs would tend to be HHOs absent the overlay carrier frequency in the given wireless coverage area and how many of the identified HHOs would tend to be SHOs absent the overlay carrier frequency in the given wireless coverage area; based on the predicting, computing a predicted net increase of HHOs that would result from removing the overlay carrier frequency from the given sector; and removing the overlay carrier frequency from the given wireless coverage area only if the predicted net increase is less than a threshold.