Patent ID: 8521159

Claim:
A method for determining neighbor Base Station (BS) information in a Mobile Station (MS) of a wireless communication system where a macro cell and a femto cell coexist, the method comprising: when a preamble scanning duration begins, acquiring preamble information associated with at least one of a plurality of neighbor BSs through preamble scanning; determining whether to scan a header for the at least one neighbor BS for which the preamble information has been acquired according to a variation of an environment of the preamble information acquired through the preamble scanning and other preamble information previously acquired through the preamble scanning, wherein determining whether to scan the header comprises: determining whether a newly detected preamble information associated with another neighbor BS exists among the at least one preamble detected through the preamble scanning, determining a variation of a reception environment for the at least one preamble again detected through the preamble scanning, and in response to determining that at least one of the newly detected preamble and the at least one preamble whose reception environment variation is greater than a threshold variation, determining to scan the header of the neighbor BS that corresponds to the at least one of the newly detected preamble and the preamble whose reception environment variation is greater than the threshold variation; and in response to determining to scan the header, scanning the header for the at least one neighbor BS and acquiring a header information of the at least one neighbor BS.