Local Anchor Schemes for Seamless and Low-Cost Handover in Coordinated Small Cells

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Cellular systems are rapidly evolving from a homogeneous macrocell deployment to a heterogeneous deployment of macrocells overlaid with many small cells. The striking features of small cells include small coverage area, ad-hoc deployment, and flexible backhaul connectivity. These features call for a profound rethinking of traditional cellular concepts including mobility management and interference management among others. Owing to the unique features, coordinated small cells or commonly referred to as network of small cells promises several benefits including efficient mobility management in a rapid and scalable fashion. The problem of handover in a high-density small cell deployment is studied in this work. A novel local anchor-based architecture for a static cluster of small cells is proposed using which new handover schemes are presented. Such clusters are prevalent in the evolving cellular systems involving high-density small cell deployments in urban, residential, and enterprise environments. A mathematical framework is developed using discrete-time-Markov-models to evaluate the proposed schemes. Using this, closed-form expressions for key handover metrics including handover cost and interruption time are derived. Extensive numerical and simulation studies indicate significant savings of over 50 percent in the handover costs and, more importantly, up to 80 percent in the handover interruption time compared to the existing 3GPP scheme for coordinated small cells.