Dual-Connectivity Prevenient Handover Scheme in Control/User-Plane Split Networks

Abstract

A control/user (C/U) plane-split network, where macro- and microevolved Node Bs (eNBs) are responsible for C/U-planes, respectively, is a potential 5G solution to address the problems experienced by high-speed railway communication systems such as frequent handovers (HOs), low system capacity, and low data rate. The C-plane transition occurs during an intermacro eNB HO to reduce the frequency of HOs. However, the intermacro-eNB HO in a C/U-plane-split network is prone to handover failures (HOFs) and long service interruption time similar to the traditional long-term evolution-advanced (LTE-A) HO without improvements because it is similar to an LTE-A HO between macro-eNBs from the perspective of C-plane transition. In this paper, we realize a C/U-plane-split network using the LTE-A dual-connectivity (DC) technique and propose a dc-based prevenient HO (PHO) scheme to improve the robustness of the intermacro-eNB HO. The proposed scheme specifically is an a priori method and uses the transmit diversity based on the dc technique to reduce the risk of HOFs and the long service interruption time. Further, we first develop the analytical expressions for HO performance for PHO and LTE-A HO, where HOFs are aligned with the LTE-A specifications such that they are defined as the association between the radio link monitor and HO processes. The analytical results are verified against simulation results. Through simulations, we compare PHO with LTE-A HO and the representative schemes of the previous literature in a variety of mobility performance metrics (such as the averages of the successful HO rate, the HOF rate, the radio link failure rate, the ping-pong rate, and the service interrupt time). The results confirm that the proposed scheme achieves superior performance in the key metrics of the successful HO rate and service interrupt time.