Hard Handoff

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What Does Hard Handoff Mean?

A hard handoff is a handoff technique used with cellular networks that requires the user’s connection to be entirely broken with an existing base station before being switched to another base station. It enables mobile/cellular service providers to provide continuous service to users, especially when they are moving away from the connected base station/cell toward another base station/cell.

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A hard handoff is also known as a hard handover or break-before-make handover.

Techopedia Explains Hard Handoff

A hard handoff is primarily implemented when the subscriber/user is being connected to a base station with a different radio frequency than the current base station. All intra-frequency handovers/handoffs are types of hard handoffs. A hard handoff is generally implemented in FDMA and TDMA based cellular networks and is more suited for applications/services that can afford a slight delay such as Internet, VoIP and WiMAX. However, a hard handoff is generally fast enough that user don’t feel an interruption or breakage in service. Moreover, unlike soft handovers that have multiple simultaneously connected channels, a hard handover is cheaper because it requires only one channel to operate.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.