The use of mobile positioning supported traffic density measurements to assist load balancing methods based on adaptive cell sizing

Traffic loads and local user densities in mobile radio networks vary, resulting in temporarily overloaded cells. To reduce their call or handover blocking rates, three basic methods of balancing the spatial traffic load am presented. The key principle is to modify the coverage area of radio cells: Adapting the handover hysteresis, a threshold used at call setup, that balances the reception power levels used for the decision in which cell to book in, changing the beam widths of the BCCH- or pilot carrier (sector characteristic) in a system with smart antennas. A management architecture is introduced to solve the network optimisation problem, based on quality and traffic measurements This architecture is extended to include interfaces to a mobile positioning system with the goal to support traffic measurements in real environments.