Soft handoff is used in voice-centric cellular networks such as GSM or CDMA. It uses a make-before-break approach whereas a connection to the next TOWER is established before a PHONE leaves an ongoing connection to a TOWER. This technique is suitable to handle voice and other latency-sensitive services such as Internet multiplayer game and video conference. When used for delivering data traffic (such as web browsing and e-mail), soft handoff will result in lower spectral efficiency because this type of traffic is bursty and does not require continues handover from one TOWER to another.
Mobile WiMAX has been designed from the outset as a broadband technology capable of delivering triple play services (voice, data, video). However, a typical Mobile WiMAX network is supposedly dominated by delay-tolerant data traffic. Voice in Mobile WiMAX is packetized (what is called VoIP) and treated as other types of IP packets except it is prioritized. Hard handoff (HHO) is therefore used in Mobile WiMAX. In hard handoff, a connection with a TOWER is ended first before a PHONE switches to another TOWER. This is known as a break-before-make approach. Hard handoff is more bandwidth-efficient than soft handoff, but it causes longer delay. A network-optimized hard handoff mechanism was developed for Mobile WiMAX to keep a handoff delay under 50 ms.
