Patent ID: 8185044

Claim:
A control entity for a wireless communications system which comprises a plurality of base stations, the wireless communications system being configured to use adaptive modulation with equal throughput (EQT) scheduling, each base station defining a plurality of beams which each have an amount of resources for supporting communication links with terminals located in the beams, and a relaying equipment, wherein the control entity is arranged to: determine a reduced amount of resources that would be allocated, as a result of operation of adaptive modulation with equal throughput (EQT) scheduling, to existing terminals served by a first beam defined by a first base station of the plurality of base stations, if the first base station were to accept a new terminal; determine a quality of communication for said existing terminals resulting from operation of adaptive modulation in view of the reduced amount of resources, and thereby determine if the first beam has sufficient resources to support a direct communication link between the new terminal and the first base station, if the direct communication link were established by allocating a portion of resources used by existing terminals to the new terminal without reducing the quality of communication for existing terminals served by the first beam below a predetermined limit; and, if the first beam does not have said sufficient resources, to invoke use of the relaying equipment to provide a first communication link between a base station defining a second beam and the relaying equipment using the resources of the second beam and a second communication link between the relaying equipment and the terminal whereby to provide a multi-hop path between the base station defining the second beam and the new terminal.