Simulating soft handover and power control for enhanced UMTS

In this paper we present a soft handover algorithm for wide band CDMA based E-UMTS networks and the associated power control algorithm. The handover and power control algorithms have been developed and implemented in the framework of a system level E-UMTS simulator developed under the 1ST SEACORN project. The paper provides a background on handover design techniques and explains the handover implementation. The soft handover algorithm has been modeled using the guidelines provided in the standards and the literature for W-CDMA intra-frequency handovers. The combination of established handover techniques with enhanced UMTS is a novelty feature of this paper and provides a reference for further performance comparison