Handover enhancement for LTE-Advanced and beyond heterogeneous cellular networks

Abstract

Heterogeneous networks (HetNets) are considered a promising cellular network architecture to provide services to the massive number of subscribers. However, in heterogeneous networks, as cell size becomes smaller, the number of handovers and handover failure increase significantly. Therefore, mobility management becomes an important issue in HetNets. In this research, we analyzed the handover parameters, and proposed a novel handover method for heterogeneous cellular networks to minimize the number of handovers and handover failure. In the proposed method, we considered dual connectivity with control and data plane split and Coordinated Multipoint (CoMP) transmission to optimize the handover parameters. The reduction of handover improves the network performance and the handover failure reduction improves the user experience. The simulation results show that the proposed handover process significantly reduces the number of handovers in heterogeneous cellular networks.