Patent ID: 7603121

Claim:
A method for supporting, by a Mobile Station (MS), a handoff between Base Stations (BSs) supporting different operation profiles in a Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) communication system including a serving BS and at least one neighbor BS adjacent to the serving BS, the serving BS currently providing a service to the MS, the method comprising: receiving, by the serving BS, physical layer information for communication from the at least one neighbor BS; combining, by the serving BS, the received physical layer information of the at least one neighbor BS; inserting, by the serving BS, the physical layer information into a PHY Profile Indicator (ID) field of an advertisement message, the PHY Profile ID field indicating an operation profile for the at least one neighbor BS; transmitting, by the serving BS, the advertisement message to the MS; receiving, by the MS, the advertisement message; and performing the handoff according to the physical layer information of the at least one neighbor BS included in the advertisement message by performing a channel synchronization process, and without performing an operation profile synchronization process according to a cell selection process.