Patent ID: 7729406

Claim:
A method of determining whether a carrier frequency should be skipped in an adaptive frequency hopping telecommunications system, the method comprising: measuring a transmission quality of the carrier frequency over time; determining whether the transmission quality of the carrier frequency has changed from an acceptable level to an unacceptable level; and deciding to skip the carrier frequency if the transmission quality of the carrier frequency has changed from the acceptable level to the unacceptable level, wherein determining whether the transmission quality of the carrier frequency has changed from the acceptable level to the unacceptable level comprises: in each of a plurality of filters having differing time constants, generating an estimated average measure of quality from the measurements of transmission quality of the carrier frequency; generating a plurality of state change decisions by comparing each of the plurality of estimated average measures of quality with a respective one of a plurality of threshold values; and deciding that the transmission quality of the carrier frequency has changed from the acceptable level to the unacceptable level if any one or more of the state change decisions indicates that the transmission quality of the carrier frequency has changed from the acceptable level to the unacceptable level.