Q4Mobile Computing
Question
2 marks
What is the difference between soft and hard handoff?
Answer
Hard Handoff ("Break before Make") physically severs the old connection before establishing the new one, causing a micro-drop. Soft Handoff ("Make before Break") mathematically maintains two simultaneous connections during the transition.
Hard handoff (used in GSM) is a violent hardware switch; if the new tower fails to connect, the call drops catastrophically. Soft handoff (used in CDMA) is mathematically elegant; the phone communicates with two towers simultaneously on the same frequency, and the network seamlessly merges the data streams.