On the impact of soft handoff in cellular systems

We present a model for soft handoff in wireless cellular networks. In such networks, due to overlapping cells, handoffs are not instantaneous and multiple channels may be occupied by a single mobile for a non-zero freeze time period. We provide a mathematical model of wireless cellular networks with soft handoffs. We examine different performance measures and show that freeze time may have a major impact on the system performance if the mobility rate is not negligible. Both exact and approximate formulations are given. Different fixed-point approximation methods are used to reduce the complexity of the exact solution. Various performance measures such as new and handoff blocking and probability of a call dropout are carefully examined. Keywords Cellular Wireless Networks, Performance Analysis, Soft handoff, Fixed-point Approximation

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2002
• Where: CN
• Authors: Nidhi Hegde, Khosrow Sohraby
• Keywords: CN 2002, Freeze Time, Soft Handoff, Wireless Cellular Networks