Soft handover is a technique that was not available on the previous generations of mobile phone
systems. With CDMA system s it is possible to have adjacent cell sites on the same frequency, and
as a result the UE can receive the signals from two adjacent cells at once, wh ile these cells are also
able to receive the signals from the UE. When this occurs and hand over is effected, it is known as
soft handover.
The decisions about handover are generally handled by the RNC. It continually monitors
information regarding the signals being received by both the UE and node B, and when a particular
link has fallen below a given level and another better radio channel is available, it initiate s a
handover. As part of this monitoring process, the UE measures ...