In cellular systems, a primary goal is the reduction of

handover failures in the system. Channel allocation policies

that address this by setting aside guard channels for the

exclusive use of handover requests suffer from a lower utilization

of the scarce channel resources. We define a class

of non-reserving policies that efficiently utilize the channels.

Within this c.lass, we identify a Most Critical First policy

that is optimal with respect to handover failure probabiiity.

Moreover, this policy is shown to have the best channel

utlization in its class as well. The proofs of optimality are

accompanied by the descr iption of a technique to realize the

policy in practice. Simulation results that demonstrate its

improvement over previous policies are presented as well.