Patent ID: 7885660

Claim:
For use in an Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) wireless network capable of communicating with a plurality of mobile stations in a coverage area of the OFDMA wireless network, a method of performing a soft handoff for one of the mobile stations from a source base station to a target base station, the method comprising: determining a source transmission period for transmitting to the source base station; determining a target transmission period for transmitting to the target base station; determining whether a time difference between the source transmission period and the target transmission period is less than a Transmit Receive Transition Gap for the mobile station, wherein the Transmit Receive Transition Gap is a time gap between a last sample of a downlink burst and a first sample of a subsequent uplink burst; and when the time difference is less than the Transmit Receive Transition Gap, performing the soft handoff.