An Optimized Handover Algorithm for LTE-A Femtocell Networks

Abstract

A femtocell is a low power mobile base station that can be used in a home or office providing the same services as a traditional base station. Femtocells were introduced in order to improve the indoor coverage and also the capacity of users. Implementation of femtocells in existing cellular network form a cross-tier network. Due to this cross-tier network, the conventional handover techniques cannot be applied for the mobility management. It offers a large number of handovers due to its low power and small coverage area which degrades the performance of the network in terms of throughput. To improve the performance, several and over algorithms were presented that used only a single criterion for handover. In this paper, a handover algorithm is proposed based on multiple steps. A handover is triggered only when all these steps and criteria are satisfied. The algorithm is simulated in LTE-Sim and the results demonstrate that the performance of the network is improved. Hand-In scenario is considered for simulation as this is the most complex handover scenario of femtocells.