Patent ID: 7274937

Claim:
A method of receiving a message from at least one of a plurality of base stations by during soft handoff, comprising: measuring strength of respective pilot signals of a plurality of base stations; receiving the message from each base station whose measured pilot signal exceeds a prescribed value, wherein the message includes at least one field related to code combining soft handoff (CCSH); determining whether one of the at least one field indicates whether the CCSH is supported or not; if the CCSH is supported, determining whether a prescribed time is to be used for swapping a first turbo encoder type to a second turbo encoder type based on one of the at least one field of the message; if the one of the field indicates that the prescribed time is to be used for swapping the first turbo encoder type to the second turbo encoder type, providing a value expressing the prescribed time which indicates an actual system time for swapping the first turbo encoder type to the second turbo encoder type by one of the at least one field of the message; and if the CCSH is supported, determining the turbo encoder type to be swapped from the first turbo encoder type to the second turbo encoder type based on one of the at least one field of the message, wherein the first encoder is a default turbo encoder and the second encoder is a complementary turbo encoder.