Evaluation of Soft Handover Micro Diversity Gain on the UMTS System Capacity and QoS

Abstract

In this paper the impact of the soft handover micro diversity gain on the UMTS system performance is investigated. First, by means of link layer simulations the micro diversity gain is measured in terms of reduction of the average Eb/N0 requirement. After modelling this effect, by some system level simulations we show the high influence of this usually neglected gain in the overall performance of UMTS, demonstrating that in downlink soft handover improves not only the quality of service but also the overall system capacity