The present invention provides a method and an apparatus for wireless communication between a wireless unit and a set of base stations. The method includes signaling the wireless unit about a plurality of transmissions of same packet data from the set of base stations to enable a soft handoff on a forward link. The plurality of transmissions of same packet data having an unsynchronized relationship. The wireless unit may use a detection/demodulation function, which is capable of simultaneously receiving and decoding signals from two or more sectors (base stations). Instead of soft-combining signals received from multiple cell sectors, the wireless unit independently decodes the received signals. Since soft combining of transmissions is avoided, there is no need to synchronize their transmissions of the same data to a particular wireless unit.