Patent ID: 7133679

Claim:
A method of estimating the operating characteristics of a communication unit in a radio network in which a plurality of such communication units can communicate with a plurality of terminals by means of wireless signals and in which the terminals and the communication units are capable of macro-diversity communication whereby a terminal may simultaneously communicate with a plurality of the communication units, the method comprising: estimating for the communication unit and neighbouring communication units the propagation characteristics of the wireless signals to and/or from each such communication unit, in a manner specific to that respective communication unit; determining based on at least the estimated propagation characteristics and the relative locations of the communication unit and the neighbouring communication units a representation of at least one of the macro-diversity gain for the communication unit and the fading margin for the communication unit wherein determining a representation of at least one of the effective macro-diversity gain for the communication unit and the fading margin for the communication unit includes: estimating a dominance area for the communication unit; modelling the delay of signals in the dominance area by means of a delay model; estimating the extent of macrodiversity in the dominance area; determining the said representation based on the said delay model, the estimated extent of macrodiversity and an estimated speed of a terminal relative to the communication units.