A SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR FACILITATING A HANDOFF

摘要

A method and system for facilitating a handoff of a remote mobile unit in a communication system (12) having a plurality of base stations (16 and 22), employs base stations (16 and 22) along a coverage area seam (10) that have a soft handoff subsystem (24) collocated with conventional base station circuitry (44) to facilitate soft handoff. The soft handoff subsystem (24) includes a transceiver (36) for generating and receiving a first group of dedicated soft handoff channels that are an orthogonally related subset of a separate second group of spread spectrum coded traffic channels wherein the soft handoff subsystem is under control of the source base station controller (14). The dedicated soft handoff channels are assigned to a specified source base station (16). Preferably the soft handoff subsystem (24) generates only the first group of dedicated soft handoff channels without pilot channels or synchronization channels.