W-CDMA uplink soft handover gain measurements

The paper aims at quantifying the uplink soft-handover (SHO) gain for a W-CDMA network from measurements in the field. SHO gains measured in the field are heavily dependent on the power control algorithms implemented at the user equipment (UE). Two different UE uplink power control implementations were used in the measurement campaign. The first approach uses uplink power control with TPC combining, i.e., combining transmit power control (TPC) bits from all the cells in the active set. The second approach does not perform TPC combining, i.e., it selects the TPC from the best server (i.e., the best CPICH Ec/Io). The uplink soft handover gains measured in static conditions for both uplink power control algorithms are presented, and the advantages and disadvantages of each power control implementation are discussed.