Creation and control of handover zone using antenna radiation pattern for high-speed train communications in unidirectional networks

Abstract

In order to successfully perform the break-before-make handover for high-speed train (HST) communications in unidirectional networks, it is well agreed that the handover zone should be created. In this paper, handover zone creation and control methods are proposed. Instead of intentionally create an engineered handover zone by overlapping the coverages of adjacent cells, the nature of antenna radiation pattern is adopted for creating the proposed handover zone. The analysis and simulation results employing the system parameters of mobile hotspot network (MHN) show that the proposed handover zone can be easily controlled by setting the parameters corresponding to the antenna radiation pattern, which enables its flexible use for handover in HST communication networks.