A new model of the soft handover mechanism in the UMTS network

Mobile networks are among the fastest-developing areas of ICT. The increasing number of network users and the number of services offered by the network makes it necessary to develop new methods of network modeling and analysis. These methods also need to take into account the influence of complex traffic management mechanisms on network efficiency. An important group of traffic management mechanisms are used for the handover functionality. The paper proposes a new analytical model of a handover mechanism employed in the UMTS network.