CARRIER ASSIGNMENT WITH MOBILITY SUPPORT IN MULTI-CARRIER OFDM SYSTEMS

Carrier pre-assignment is applied in multi-carrier handover operation to mitigate the impact to the user experience during handover and to achieve various objectives of call admission control in wireless multi-carrier OFDM networks. With carrier pre-assignment, a mobile station communicates its multi-carrier information to a target base station. The target base station pre-assigns secondary carriers to fulfill the requirements of the mobile station. In a first embodiment, a break-before-entry (BBE) multi-carrier handover procedure with carrier pre-assignment is provided. In a second embodiment, an entry-before-break (EBB) multi-carrier handover procedures for both inter-FA and intra-FA with carrier pre-assignment are provided. The multi-carrier handover procedures with carrier pre-assignment may be applied to 2-to-2 or N-to-N carriers handover situation. Because target secondary carriers are pre-assigned before handoff, the mobile station is ready for data transmission over multiple carriers after handover without additional carrier assignment procedure.