Patent ID: 8717930

Claim:
A method of operating a wireless cellular access point in electrical communication with a cellular network configured to allow access from at least one user device, the method comprising: (a) determining a set of acceptable cellular base stations by establishing a connection with at least one cellular base station among a plurality of cellular base stations, for a first protocol of operation; (b) for each cellular base station where a connection is established, determining the available data rate for the connection in a first protocol of operation; (c) repeating steps described in (a) and (b) for another protocol of operation in response to the cellular network and the cellular access point jointly supporting more than one protocol of operation; (d) selecting the cellular base station based on a metric that takes into account data rates available over the wireless links corresponding to the plurality of cellular base stations; (e) determining data rates available over wireless links with one or more of said plurality of cellular base stations by controlling beam direction control circuitry that is in electrical communication with an antenna having a plurality of antenna elements, the beam direction circuitry including variable amplitude adjustment devices in each of a plurality of signal paths associated with said antenna elements, the beam direction circuitry configured to adjust a direction of a beam of said antenna and to successively determine data rates available over wireless links at said beam directions; and (f) periodically repeating steps (a)-(e) during operation.