Performance evaluation of Soft Handover parameters in WCDMA system

This paper focuses on Soft Handover (SHO) where the User Equipment (UE) is connected simultaneously to several Node B(s) on the same frequency. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the differences of Soft Handover parameters (addition and drop windows) and their impacts on network performance (SHO transport network overhead). The drive test was conducted to collect real measurement data in live UMTS network. The data are analyzed and simulated to examine the behavior of Soft Handover events. It is shown that the addition and drop windows have decisive effects on the SHO transport network. Thus, the parameter for addition and drop windows setting should be planned properly to mitigate the SHO transport network overhead and ping pong effect.