Semisoft Handover Gain Analysis Over OFDM-Based Broadband Systems

Various approaches to analyze handover have been developed to guarantee the quality of service of multimedia services over mobile communication networks. However, no framework for multicarrier-based broadband systems, e.g., multicarrier code-division multiple access and orthogonal frequency-division multiple access, is available based on the perspective of link capacity. This paper presents a handover technique referred to as semisoft-handover-utilizing macroscopic diversity, which permits both hard and soft handover advantages for services over multicarrier-based broadband networks to be retained. Theoretical analysis is then performed to measure the handover gain over the forward link in terms of an outage probability. Simulation data verify that semisoft handover outperforms other traditional handover techniques, in particular for high-data-rate services.