An IEEE 802.21 MIS‐based mobility management for D2D communications over heterogeneous networks (HetNets)

Abstract

SummaryThe rapid growth and innovation of the various mobile communication technologies have caused a change in the paradigm of Internet access. In next‐generation mobile system, which is also known as fifth‐generation (5G) network, all user connections are expected to be heterogeneous in nature. Hence, an intelligent mobility management mechanism is essential to satisfy the requirements of lower latency, less power consumptions, and last but not least, possible uninterrupted ongoing session when a user equipment (UE) moves across network boundaries. On the other hand, device‐to‐device (D2D) communication has been proposed as a promising technology to boost the network performance in 5G. The issue related to mobility management for D2D communication in 5G heterogeneous network environments has attracted attention from academic society. In this paper, we leverage on IEEE 802.21 Media Independent Service (MIS) and propose a new framework, enhanced version of IEEE 802.21 MIS that supports D2D communication (E‐MIS‐D2D) to enhance D2D mobility experience over heterogeneous networks. Moreover, a load‐aware mode selection algorithm is proposed for selecting the best target mode. Through extensive simulation studies, we validate that the proposed method outperforms the existing methods in terms of packet loss ratio, average throughput, latency, bandwidth usage, and load rate of Evolved Node B (eNB).