Soft handover performance for UMTS operations

Assessment of handover performance is key for ensuring the desired quality of service to mobile communications. Handover algorithms in UMTS are quite sophisticated and handover performance depends on a range of control parameters that need to be tuned to accommodate the operating environments and contribute to achieving the target QoS objectives. The paper investigates the performance of soft handover for UMTS systems. To this end, the paper introduces a detailed model for handover handling and exercises the model under a range of combinations regarding operating environment and handover control parameters. The conclusions drawn are useful for identifying the range of control parameters enabling robust and effective operation of UMTS systems.