Patent ID: 8238959

Claim:
A method of operating a serving base station (BS) for controlling a transmission (Tx) power in a mobile communication system based on fractional frequency reuse, the method comprising: receiving at the serving BS, from each of a plurality of neighboring BSs, an RSSI value for the serving BS together with a band index identifying a protected band of the neighboring BS, wherein the protected band of the neighboring BS comprises a restricted band of the serving BS; for each of the restricted bands of the serving BS, selecting by the serving BS a greatest RSSI value from the RSSI values received from the neighboring BSs corresponding to the restricted band; for each of the restricted bands of the serving BS, calculating at the serving BS a backoff value of the Tx power for the restricted band based on the selected greatest RSSI value corresponding to the restricted band; and for each of the restricted bands, determining at the serving BS the Tx power for the restricted band by using a difference between the backoff value of the Tx power for the restricted band and a maximum Tx power.