Soft handoff in a CDMA packet switched wireless environment

Future wireless ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) networks present a number of mobility related challenges. Handoffs due to user mobility require network signaling to maintain the communication link and may result in packet loss due to packet misrouting or misordering. This paper proposes a handoff solution for an ATM-based code division multiple access (CDMA) packet switched wireless environment. The proposed solution combines soft handoff and nearest common node rerouting (NCNR) to meet the challenges of wireless ATM. It is shown that, compared with the hard handoff approach, the proposed solution reduces the number of control signals required for handoff and the volume of buffered information packets during handoff, mitigates the problem of packet misrouting and misordering, and significantly improves the radio link transmission accuracy