This work presents a frame-structure, referred to as CATM (CATV ATM), to serve as a wireless network infrastructure. The widespread CATV (Community Antenna TV) networks are attractive infrastructures for next generation wireless networks. Providing interactive broadband services over CATV networks is a major trend in communication and ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) networks with broadband communication features well fitted to be the backbone of CATV networks. Based on the proposed network architecture, this work addresses and investigates the problems of call setup and handoff handling. This work also proposes a wireless signaling protocol for establishing mobile connections over the CATM-based wireless networks. To enhance bandwidth utilization, the proposed scheme attempts to keep the path resulting after handoff as short as possible. The protocol also evolves a seamless handoff scheme (denoted as SHSW-CATM), that can preserve data continuity, is transparent to other mobile terminals, and produces a shorter path. Analytical results reveal that the SHSW-CATM has a high probability of obtaining an optimal path (that is, a non-elongated path) following mobility.