Radio resource management

1 . A method of managing downlink radio resources for the pooling of multiple amplifier resources between sectors of a cell, the method comprising the steps:

receiving downlink power information for each sector of the cell;

filtering the downlink power information to determine different duration power requirements of the sector;

modifying the received downlink power information for each sector of the cell, in response to the different duration power requirements, and such that a more heavily loaded sector will be allocated more power than a less heavily loaded sector; and

making a downlink radio resource management decision on the basis of the different duration power requirements and modified downlink power information such that a more heavily loaded sector will be allocated additional power shared from other sector's amplifiers than would be available from that single sector's amplifier.

2 . The method as claimed in claim 1 further comprising the step of determining the available downlink power and using the available downlink power information in the step of determining a downlink power allocation.

3 . The method as claimed in claim 2 wherein the available downlink power is determined using information relating to overload control alarms.

4 . The method as claimed in claim 2 wherein the determination of a downlink power allocation depends on a comparison of the downlink power information and the available downlink power information.

5 . The method as claimed in claim 1 wherein the step of modifying the received downlink power information comprises the step of making a scaling and a filtering modification to the downlink power information resulting in scaled and filtered modified downlink power information; and the step of making a downlink radio resource management decision comprises the step of making a first downlink radio resource management decision on the basis of the scaled modified downlink power information and making a second downlink radio resource management decision on the basis of the filtered modified downlink power information.

6 . The method as claimed in claim 1 wherein the modification relates to a scaling and filtering of the downlink power information for at least one cell in a multi-cell base site.

7 . The method as claimed in claim 1 wherein the scaling and filtering is carried out differently for different radio resource management decisions.

8 . The method as claimed in claim 1 wherein the filtering of the downlink power information includes averaging the power information over different lengths of times.

9 . The method as claimed in claim 8 wherein the averaging is performed over different lengths of time for different radio resource management decisions.

10 . (canceled)

11 . An apparatus for managing downlink radio resources for the pooling of multiple amplifier resources between sectors of a cell, comprising:

means for filtering received downlink power information to determine different duration power requirements of the sector;

means for modifying received downlink power information for each sector of the cell, in response to the different duration power requirements, and such that a more heavily loaded sector will be allocated more power than a less heavily loaded sector; and

means for making a downlink radio resource management decision on the basis of the different duration power requirements and modified downlink power information such that a more heavily loaded sector will be allocated additional power shared from other sector's amplifiers than would be available from that single sector's amplifier.

12 . The apparatus as claimed in claim 11 wherein the means for modifying received downlink power information is a power scaling module and a multi-bandwidth filter.

13 . The apparatus as claimed in claim 11 wherein the means for making a downlink radio resource management decision on the basis of the modified downlink power information is a radio resource management module.

14 . (canceled)