The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Mar. 14, 2000
Filed:
Sep. 12, 1997
Stephan ten Brink, Wurttemberg, DE;
Richard D van Nee, De Meern, NL;
Lucent Technologies, Inc., Murray Hill, NJ (US);
Abstract
A soft handover system is provided for a multiple sub-carrier communication system, applicable to the uplink (mobile unit to base stations) and/or the downlink (base stations to mobile unit). The soft handover system uses multiple sub-carriers to simultaneously transmit multiple sub-carrier signals between at least two base stations and the mobile unit in the uplink and/or downlink. In certain embodiments, the soft handover system provides for synchronized multiple sub-carrier transmission such that the delay differences between the multiple sub-carrier transmissions from the different base stations arriving at the mobile unit are within the guard time of the multiple sub-carrier symbols. Certain embodiments of the soft handover system use the same set of sub-carriers for links between the mobile unit and the base stations of different cells, and other embodiments use different sets of sub-carriers for links between the mobile unit and the base stations of different cells. In the soft handover system using the same set of sub-carriers, the mobile unit receives downlink signals with identical data content from the different base stations. The mobile unit need not distinguish between the signals from the different base stations. The mobile unit just treats the downlink signals from the different base stations as multipath components, thereby increasing the diversity gain. In the case of a multiple sub-carrier CDMA system, the soft handover system can use the same sub-carriers as well as the same CDMA encoding and/or spreading code.