Patent attributes
One implementation provides a novel station-to-station handoff using an adaptive or directional antenna. The directional antenna generates a plurality of directional search beams to search for pilot signals from new base stations. The search beams are scanned one beam at a time to obtain the relative direction of all new base stations detected. From the detected base stations, a new base station with the strongest signal strength is selected and compared to the currently used base station. If the new base station has stronger signal strength than the current base station, then a communication handoff from the current base station to the new base station is initiated. In one feature of the present invention, two directional beams are used to communicate with the current and new base stations. Once a communication link is established with the new base station, the directional beam to the current base station is terminated.
