Another example of an operation that can concurrently involve two carriers is handover between carriers of a cell site. More particularly, two carriers of a cell site may define partially overlapping coverage areas, as described above. A simple example of overlapping circular cells having as a common center a cell tower transmitting on two (or more) LTE carriers serves as an illustration. Again considering the example configuration of FIG. 7A, if one carrier is Carrier 1 and the other is Carrier 2, then two cells might be concentric circles, but with the Carrier 2 cell having a smaller radius owing to attenuation of its antenna transmission power. In this case, a UE being served on Carrier 2 and positioned near the outer edge of the Carrier 2 cell (e.g., near the radius) might handover to the still strong signal of Carrier 1. Since this comparative cell topology will apply to all UEs being served on Carrier 2, the cell site might be subject to an excessive rate of handovers from the Carrier 2 cell to the Carrier 1 cell, leading to a load imbalance between the two cells.

It will be appreciated that there could be other examples of cellular wireless services on two or more carriers of a cell site for which unequal attenuation can be a source of service degradation.