Patent ID: 8036684

Claim:
A method of determining a group of n user terminals in a telecommunication network which are closest to a point of interest, n being an integer value, the method comprising: a) determining a set of cells of the network, each having an associated distance range to the point of interest with a minimum and maximum value, and setting a search range with an upper limit; b) determining a current search cell of the set of cells which has the lowest minimum value lower than the upper limit; c) querying the current search cell for user data associated with user terminals in the current search cell, adding the user terminals to a set of found user terminals, and if the set of found user terminals comprises n or more user terminals, adjusting the upper limit of the search range to the n th lowest distance between each of the user terminals in the group and the point of interest; d) repeating the steps b) and c) until no further cell having a minimum value lower than the upper limit can be determined; and e) determining the group of n closest user terminals as the n user terminals in the queried cells having the n lowest distances to the point of interest.