Patent ID: 8843130

Claim:
A base station located in a first cellular telephone cell, wherein the first cellular telephone cell is surrounded by a plurality of second cellular telephone cells neighboring the first cellular telephone cell, the base station comprising: a plurality of antennas; an analog front end in communication with the plurality of antennas; an interference module configured to identify wireless cellular telephone signals respectively received by the plurality of antennas from one or more cellular telephones located outside of the first cellular telephone cell, wherein the wireless cellular telephone signals are respectively transmitted by the one or more cellular telephones in accordance with a transmit power; a direction module configured to respectively determine a direction of each of the wireless cellular telephone signals respectively received by the plurality of antennas from the one or more cellular telephones located outside of the first cellular telephone cell; and a cell module configured to identify, based on the direction respectively determined for each of the wireless cellular telephone signals, one or more of the plurality of second cellular telephone cells from which the wireless cellular telephone signals were received by the plurality of antennas; and an overload indicator module configured to, in response to the analog front end becoming overloaded, respectively send an overload indicator only to those base stations serving the one or more of the plurality of second cellular telephone cells identified by the cell module, wherein the overload indicator instructs the base stations to respectively reduce the transmit power of the one or more cellular telephones.