Effects of the BS power and soft handoff on the outage and capacity in the forward link of an SIR-based power-controlled CDMA system

In the forward link of a signal-to-interference ratio (SIR)-based fast power-controlled CDMA system, the fraction of base station (BS) power allocated to a mobile station (MS) is considered as a key factor affecting the system performance. By using our proposed macrodiversity non-orthogonality factor, we establish a unified analytical model to characterize the distribution of the fraction of BS power allocated to an MS in either the non-soft handoff mode or the soft handoff mode. By using that distribution and limiting the maximum fraction of BS power available to an MS, a closed-form expression of the capacity at a certain outage probability is obtained. The effects of system parameters, such as the available Rake fingers, the soft handoff threshold, the unbalance of the BS power, and the power control error, on the capacity are investigated from the viewpoint of the limitation on the fraction of BS power allocated to an MS. Simulation results show that soft handoff does not always improve capacity and the capacity gain may result depending on the choice of the system parameters