Dynamic resource allocation with a soft handover procedure for application in a broadband system

This work investigates the advantages of adopting a soft handover (SHO) procedure with a TDD-TDMA-OFDM access method in a WLAN system, when broadband mobile users are considered. Reference is made to the MEDIAN-ACTS system scenario extended to a multi-cell environment. A particular distributed queue packet reservation multiple access scheme with priorities, called PAMA (priority assignment multiple access) is considered. Simulation results carried out in the present investigation indicate that SHO outperforms hard HO (HHO), in terms of packet loss and time delay, and its performance approaches that of the fixed users case. In fact, SHO exploits the overlapping area between adjacent cells permitting users to be simultaneously served by two base stations (BSs) instead of a single one. As a consequence, the overall offered traffic is better distributed among the BSs of the system, resulting into a more efficient resource allocation.