Patent ID: 7142868

Claim:
In a wireless communication system comprising a plurality of base stations each having a respective radiation pattern defining one or more sectors, a method of predicting future per-sector traffic in the wireless communication system comprising: receiving input indicative of current per-sector traffic; receiving input indicative of expected future market traffic; using the expected future market traffic to extrapolate from the current per-sector traffic to establish a measure of expected future per-sector traffic by a process comprising: (a) categorizing the sectors into groups based on growth rate of traffic in the sectors; (b) distributing the expected future market traffic among the groups based on the growth rates of the groups, to associate with each group a respective group-portion of the expected future market traffic; and (c) within each group, distributing the group's respective portion among the sectors in the group, to associate with each sector a respective sector-portion of the expected future market traffic; and outputting an indication of the expected future per-sector traffic, wherein outputting the indication of the expected future per-sector traffic comprises outputting an indication, with respect to each of at least some of the sectors, of the sector's respective sector-portion of the expected future market traffic.