Analysis of fade margins for soft and hard handoffs in cellular CDMA systems

摘要

The effect of handoff techniques on fade margin is investigated. We provide an accurate comparison for soft and hard handoffs in a two-cell system. An upper bound on the fade margin for hard-handoff systems is derived and an approximation formula is obtained empirically. Simulation results show that this approximation is very accurate over reasonable ranges of system parameters. Extension of our analysis to multiple-cell systems are illustrated using a three-cell system as an example.