When LTE system was developed one of the big technical feature from UMTS Soft/Softer

handover was missing from the architecture. There are many specific reasons why LTE
dropped altogether soft handover (connect-before-break) from the system design.

Before discussing about why LTE skipped soft handover and only implemented hard
handover, let’s check the basic concept of soft/softer handover.

Soft handover concept

Soft handover or connect-before-break handover is a category of handover procedure
where radio links are added or removed in such a fashion that there is always one radio link
connected to the UE.

All the radio links connected to the UE at a particular time are part of the ACTIVE SET and
the number can vary from 1 to 8. This means at least one and maximum of 8 radio links are
connected to the UE.

Soft handover is a part of WCDMA system which is basically same in concept as in CDMA
systems.

In the case of soft handover the mobile station is in the overlapping cell coverage area of
two sectors belonging to different base stations. In downlink direction signals received from
different base stations are combined at the rake receiver of the UE. In the uplink the
scrambled signals from different base stations for a particular UE are compared frame-by-
frame basis at the RNC and the best candidate is selected after each interleaving period; i.e.
every 10, 20, 40 or 80ms.

UMTS Soft Handover Architecture

Soft and softer handovers are only possible when UE is in connected state with dedicated
channel (DCH).

Even with HSDSCH (High-Speed Downlink Shared Channel) there is no soft handover in
UMTS. In cased HSDPA communication there is only hard handover which is break before
connect. Means UE is never connected to more than one radio link at a time and when UE
goes out of coverage of a particular cell that radio link is teared down before adding the
better radio link.

Requirements for soft handover and what is missing in LTE

Let’s discuss why LTE does not have soft handover as in WCDMA and CDMA systems.
Though there are various reasons, I documented here three causes why soft handover was
omitted from LTE.

Adjacent Cell Frequency Reuse

Soft handover is possible in CDMA because adjacent cells can operate on the same
frequencies as long as they use different scrambling codes. So, a UE can listen to two
different cells by decoding the received signals twice, using a scrambling code from each
cell on each for each decoded signal. This allows a UE to communicate with both cells
during handover, making it a soft handover.

LTE is based on OFDMA, which is fundamentally a frequency division method. This means
that a UE has to actually resync to a different set of frequency subcarriers when it hands
over between cells, removing the possibility for soft handover. In fact, when a handover is
beginning, an LTE UE has to go into a ‘compressed mode’ where it listens to its current cell
for part of the time and searches for a new cell the rest of the time. With modern radio
technology, this retuning can happen fast enough to make the inter-frequency retuning
much more seamless than it was in older technologies like GSM, obviating the need for soft
handover.

Flat Architecture
LTE has flat architecture which means there’s no central node controller like the BSC or
RNC. Therefore there’s no need to sum up multiple active signals like you would say for in
cdma. Another reason being, there’s no need for power control in LTE because of its
orthogonal modulation scheme, there’s no self interference (like in cdma) so no worries
about Rx diversity gain and therefore SHO can be dropped.

Orthogonality in LTE
Cell-edge reception (which was at the core of Soft HO design in WCDMA) issue is not quite
applicable in LTE networks because of orthogonality in both uplink and downlink. Therefore
soft handover can be dropped from the LTE system.
Conclusion
Though LTE does not have soft or softer handover it still maintains seamless mobility using
hard handover. In LTE there are three different types of handover can be possible

Intra-LTE Handover: In this case source and target cells are part of the same LTE network.
Inter-LTE Handover: Handover happens towards other LTE nodes. (Inter-MME and Inter-
SGW)
Inter-RAT Handover: Handover between different radio technologies. For example
handover from LTE to WCDMA.