A METHOD FOR PERFORMING A SOFT HANDOFF

摘要

The present invention increases the success rate of soft handoffs by enhancing the ability of a mobile-telephone to receive a handoff direction messa ge that identifies the traffic channel being assigned to enable a candidate base station to communicate with the mobile-telephone. Specifically, the aforementioned ability of the mobile-telephone is enhanced by using the candidate base station to transmit the handoff direction message on a communication channel belonging to the candidate base sta tion and being listened to by the mobile-telehone. In situations where signals transm itted from active set base stations have a low signal-to-noise ratio at the mobile-tel ephone, signals transmitted from the candidate base station may have a higher signal-to-noise ratio at the mobile-telephone. In these situations, the transmission of the HD m essages from the candidate base station increases the likelihood that a copy of the hand off direction message will be successfully received by the mobile-telephone, thereby enhancing the success rate of soft handoffs.