Abstract: Disclosed is a method for improving system capacity without compromising soft handoff by optimizing the number of communication links used in soft handoff. The number of communication links used in soft handoff are optimized by minimizing the number of base stations in the active sets based on signal characteristics of associated communication links. By minimizing the number of base stations in the active sets, the number of traffic channels reserved for soft handoffs may be reduced since less traffic channels would be needed for soft handoffs, thereby increasing system capacity by increasing the number of available traffic channels for assignment to mobile-telephones in non-soft handoff situations.

Abstract: The present invention is an extended range concentric cell base station and a method for extending a cell size or access range without incurring ASIC correlator re-design. This is accomplished with a concentric cell base station design that incorporates multiple timing protocols and search windows. The concentric base station has associated a micro cell and a macro cell, wherein the micro and macro cells use a same frequency band but different timing protocols and search windows that will cause signals transmitted by mobile-telephones within their respective cells to be received within the confines of at least one search window.