UMTS: Handovers: A Depth Analysis on UMTS Handovers from Theory to Practical

In cellular telecommunications, the term handover or handoff refers to the process of transferring an ongoing call or data session from one channel connected to the core network to another channel. A hard handover is one in which the channel in the source cell is released and only then the channel in the target cell is engaged. Thus the connection to the source is broken before or 'as' the connection to the target is made—for this reason such handovers are also known as break-before-make. A soft handover is one in which the channel in the source cell is retained and used for a while in parallel with the channel in the target cell. In this case the connection to the target is established before the connection to the source is broken, hence this handover is called make-before-break. The interval, during which the two connections are used in parallel, may be brief or substantial This Book is based on theoretical to practical approach and using real world scenario i implemented UMTS handovers concepts with support of OPNET modeller.