User's Manual

2. Preliminary Decisions
AMPS EAC-2100 Manual: (Draft, 02/01) Page 1-6
1.2.3 EAC-2100 Operation (Continued)
Boosting to Multiple Donor Cells. To provide for situations in which in-progress calls may be
linked to various neighboring cell sites (multi-donor operation), the system allows for entry of
different donor DTC RF channel lists. For handing in subscribers, note that the donor
antenna system at the EAC-2100 must be specifically designed for multiple donor
operation.
In addition, the MAHO feature of TIA/EIA-136 systems allows the cellular system to hand-off
the subscriber to neighboring cells even if the neighboring cell does not have a propagation path
to the EAC-2100. No additional hardware is required at these neighboring cells. The only
requirement is that these neighboring cells must have their “locate-and-verify” option disabled.
If the booster is adjacent to a single cell site, that cell site is referred to as the donor cell, and the
DCCH channel of that cell site is the donor DCCH channel. The DTC RF channels used in the
donor cell may be entered into the donor DTC channel list with the DVCC of that cell site to
handle subscribers that drive between the donor and booster with a call up.
If the booster is adjacent to several cell sites and there are donor antennas pointing at these cell
sites, the DCCH channel of one of the cell sites is chosen as the donor DCCH channel, and this
cell is then referred to as the primary donor cell. The DTC RF channels of all the neighboring
cells are entered into the scan list with the DVCC of the neighboring cells. Signal strength at
the D1 antenna port must be balanced (to within the cell system hand -off threshold
window) from all neighboring cell sites.
Also, the DCCH channel that is assigned to the EAC-2100 must be included in the DCCH
neighbor list that is sent out by the donor. This is necessary to allow the subscriber to quickly
find the boosted DCCH channel.
Calls placed or answered from within the booster coverage area (identified by decoding the data
streams) are repeated back to the primary donor cell. Calls handed in (identified by channel and
time-slot scanning) are repeated back to the cell on which the call was in progress.
Driving away from the Repeater to The Donor. The EAC-2100 monitors for weak
subscriber RSSI, and also monitors the MAHO information that is being sent back from the
subscriber handset. If the MAHO information indicates that the subscriber is hearing the donor
DCCH channel at an adequate level, then the EAC-2100 will send a hand-off message to that
subscriber to return him to the donor DTC RF channel.
Driving away from the Donor and the Repeater. For this case, the TIA-136 MAHO feature
allows the donor to hand the subscriber to an adjacent cell. The donor determines if the
subscriber is a candidate for hand-off by evaluating the DCCH channel levels in the MAHO list.
If the subscriber is reporting an adjacent DCCH that is stronger than what it is reporting from
the donor DCCH, then the system will issue a hand-off message to that subscriber.
Note that for adjacent cell site handoff to work properly, the system will have to be configured
such that: