Patent ID: 8457642

Claim:
In a mobile communication network, a method of determining a coordinating set of cooperating cells for coordinated multipoint transmission and/or reception, said method comprising: generating a cell map for a coverage area of a serving cell serving a mobile terminal, the cell map dividing the coverage area into a plurality of coordinating areas and associating each coordinating area with a set of neighboring cells to serve as cooperating cells; storing, in a memory of a serving base station located in the service cell, the cell map; determining a current location of a mobile terminal within the serving cell; and selecting one or more of the neighboring cells in the set of neighboring cells associated with the coordinating area in which the mobile terminal is currently located to include in the coordinating set for the mobile terminal; wherein generating the cell map or updating the cell map comprises generating or updating the cell map based on signal quality reports from one or more neighboring cells or mobile terminals of each one of the plurality of coordinating areas, said signal quality reports comprising signal quality measurements associated with mobile terminals at known locations and wherein generating or updating the cell map comprises correlating the known locations associated with the signal quality measurements with corresponding coordinating areas, and averaging signal quality measurements associated with the same coordinating areas to obtain visibility metrics for the coordinating areas.