Patent ID: 7389111

Claim:
A method for facilitating handover between a base station pair in a communication system comprising: computing a cost function for the base station pair dependent on a relative received signal strength and an adaptive hysteresis factor dependent on the standard deviation of a residual signal from each base station of the base station pair, wherein a determination of the adaptive hysteresis factor comprises: computing the standard deviation of a residual signal associated with transmission from a first base station to obtain an estimate of the first base station signal strength fluctuation, computing the standard deviation of a residual signal associated with transmission from a second base station to obtain an estimate of the second base station signal strength fluctuation, and multiplying the sum of the estimated station signal strength fluctuation of the first and second base station with a scaling factor to obtain the adaptive hysteresis factor; and selecting a base station from the pair dependent on the cost function and a second factor, wherein the second factor is either base station load or physical distance between a user terminal and the base station.