The capacity-coverage tradeoff in CDMA systems with soft handoff

In Veeravalli and Sendonaris (1997), the tradeoff between coverage and number of users was explicitly characterized for systems without soft handoff. It is well known that CDMA soft handoff can result in gains both in coverage and in number of users supported. In this paper we extend the analysis of Veeravalli and Sendonaris to derive analytical expressions that quantify the gains from soft handoff. Our analysis may be used in cellular planning in the following two ways: first, to calculate the coverage of cells based on the amount of traffic they will support; and second, to set hard limits on the number of users admitted into the cell in order to meet coverage requirements.