Soft handover gains in a fast power controlled WCDMA uplink

The scope of this paper is to demonstrate the impact of the soft handover on the WCDMA network performance. The gains from the selection combining and increased diversity in uplink soft handover of a WCDMA system have been studied with the help of link level simulations. Two base stations have been included in the simulation model. The average required transmitted and received E/sub b//I/sub 0/ ensuring the desired quality has been measured as a function of the level difference between the two base stations. This has been done for two multipath propagation channels and several mobile station (MS) speeds. In addition, the paper discusses how the soft handover reduces the required power control headroom near the cell edge.