Evaluation of W-CDMA network performance and impact of soft handover using dynamic network simulations

Soft handover is an essential technique for code-division multiple-access (CDMA) mobile cellular communication systems. The main benefits of soft handover are the fading margin improvement and a higher uplink capacity while the disadvantages include the overhead in the radio access network and the increased downlink interference due to the transmission from multiple base stations. The investigations reported in this paper consider this trade-off for setting the soft handover parameters. The parameters and the corresponding network performance are evaluated for the future Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) using a dynamic network simulation tool.