CELLULAR COMMUNICATION SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR COEXISTENCE OF DISSIMILAR SYSTEMS

A cellular communication system comprises first and second serving communication units supporting respective first and second time division duplex (TDD) modes of operation on respective first and substantially frequency-adjacent second frequency channels comprising a plurality of uplink transmission resources divided into uplink timeslots and a plurality of downlink transmission resources divided into downlink timeslots. The first and second modes of TDD operation are dissimilar and communications cover substantially the same or overlapping geographic area. The first serving communication unit transmits a plurality of idle periods in the first mode of operation arranged to encompass a time period used by the second serving communication unit for switching communication between downlink and uplink transmissions of the second mode of operation.