Patent ID: 8089935

Claim:
A method for performing a handoff in a telecommunication system comprising: performing a first multi-cell joint detection process for decoding communications within a home cell when a mobile terminal enters a handoff region between the home cell and one or more neighboring cells, wherein performing the first multi-cell joint detection process includes: performing a multi-cell channel estimation to obtain pilot channel estimation codes for both the home cell and the one or more neighboring cells; selecting code channels neighboring to each other based on a cell boundary and a code channel power intensity of the one or more neighboring cells; grouping the selected code channels to obtain a code channel grouping result according to correlation between the code channels and correlation between the pilot channel estimation codes; and performing the first multi-cell joint detection process based on the pilot channel estimation codes and the code channel grouping result of the home cell and the one or more neighboring cells; performing a handoff process when the mobile terminal is in the home cell to join a target neighboring cell; and performing a second multi-cell joint detection process for decoding communications between the mobile terminal and the target neighboring cell after the handoff process is performed.