Patent ID: 8693439

Claim:
A method, comprising: in response to performing a first hand over of a user equipment to a first network access node from a second network access node using a first threshold amount of time and performing a second hand over of the user equipment from the first network access node to the second network access node, creating an updated first threshold amount of time; in response to a determination that the first network access node is suitable for a third handover procedure, determining, at the second network access node, whether an amount of time since the second hand over exceeds the updated first threshold amount and determining, at the second network access node, whether there is a change in a channel condition between the user equipment and the first network access node that exceeds a second threshold amount; in response to a determination that the amount of time since the second hand over from the first network access node does not exceed the updated first threshold amount and to a determination that there is not a change in the channel condition between the user equipment and the first network access node that exceeds the second threshold amount, avoiding consideration of the first network access node as a handover candidate from the second network access node; and performing a wireless network self-optimization process in response to a determination being made that a threshold value where the user equipment ceases to ping pong between the first network access node and the second network access node is approximately the same value for a plurality of user equipment, by considering the threshold value as an optimized value that is used by a plurality of network access nodes when making user equipment handover decisions.