Method and apparatus for merging neighbor lists in a CDMA mobile telephone system

In a code division multiple access (CDMA) spread spectrum cellular communication system in which a mobile station user communicates with another system user via at least one base station, wherein each base station transmits a common pilot signal of a different PN offset with respect to other base stations in said system, a method for merging neighbor lists to account for false indications of signal strength due to topography. The merged list, included as part of the Neighbor List Update Message, is arrived at by first measuring pilot signal strengths and phase delays received by the mobile station and reporting this information to the mobile telephone switching office. At the mobile telephone switching office, pilots whose phase delay indicates a large round trip delay time are ignored in subsequent calculations. Then a neighbor list union is generated as the union of all predetermined neighbor lists corresponding to said received pilot signals. Each member, or base station, in the neighbor list union is operated on by a weighting function which takes into account how often each member is included in each received pilot's predetermined neighbor list and the signal strength of such pilots. The relative weights are then sorted and the highest ranking members form the Neighbor List Update Message, up to a predetermined number of members.