Adaptive distribution‐based handover scheme for cellular communication networks

In this paper, we propose a new Generalized Distribution‐Based Handover (DBHO) to deal with the inefficient utilization of spectral resources due to the non‐uniform cell loads. The DBHO scheme is different from the existing adaptive schemes since it uses a new criterion to initiate handover when moving from/to a congested cell. Two risk factors are used to dynamically change handover boundaries according to the distribution of traffic loads. This controls the handover initiation process such that a user in a congested cell that is moving to a free cell is allowed to initiate a handover to a new cell earlier, as long as the signal received from the target cell is higher than a certain threshold. While delaying the handover initiation process for a user moving in the opposite direction, as long as the signal received from the serving cell is not lower than a certain threshold. Our results show a substantial reduction in the handover and call dropouts rates. Our scheme is complementary to the existing adaptive schemes proposed in the literature. The proposed scheme also gives cellular system designers a new tool to optimize the overall network performance by initiating handovers based on the traffic intensities. Frequent handovers increase the load on switching networks, which consequently degrades the Quality of Service (QoS). Existing handover schemes usually use parameters such as the received signal strength for initiating a handover with some additional measurements to reduce unnecessary handovers and call dropouts. These schemes perform well when cell loads are somewhat evenly distributed, but fail to account for nonuniform traffic, as is often the case in microcells. Hence, it is desirable to design efficient handover schemes to avoid unnecessary handovers, reduce call dropouts and yet dynamically adapt to the variation of traffic among cells. In this paper, we present a new adaptive handover scheme that dynamically changes the handover boundaries to balance cell loads and to effectively reduce the average number of handovers. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A measurement‐based study of handover improvement through range expansion and interference coordination

Although the range expansion and inter‐cell interference coordination (ICIC) have been shown to successfully enhance the capacity and load balancing in the Heterogeneous Network, their impacts on the handover (HO) performance are not fully understood in existing studies. In this paper, a novel measurement‐based approach is adopted to investigate these issues, where the real measured data of the reference signal received power in a macro–pico co‐channel deployment are collected. Then the mobility performance in terms of the HO failure rate and ping‐pong rate is simulated with various ICIC schemes in the same reality environment. This has been made possible by modeling the possible HO failure events based on evaluating the downlink received signal‐to‐interference‐plus‐noise ratio from reference signal received power. The simulation results indicate that range expansion together with ICIC can have positive or negative influences on macro‐to‐pico, pico‐to‐macro, pico‐to‐pico and macro‐to‐macro HOs in the Heterogeneous Network. The existing static ICIC or mobility‐based ICIC cannot handle the intra‐layer (pico‐to‐pico and macro‐to‐macro) interference, thus limiting their abilities to improve the mobility performance. Motivated by this, a dynamic‐ICIC‐aided HO procedure is proposed. The proposed HO enhancement method is more flexible and effective in mitigating both the inter‐layer and intra‐layer interference, outperforming the existing methods significantly. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Handover authentication between different types of eNBs in LTE networks

There are two types of base stations in the long term evolution (LTE) wireless networks, home eNodeB (HeNB) and eNodeB (eNB). It is critical to achieve seamless handovers between the HeNB and the eNB in order to support mobility in the LTE networks. A handover from an eNB/HeNB to a new eNB/HeNB, suggested by the third generation partnership project (3GPP), requires distinct procedures for different mobility scenarios, which will increase the system complexity. Besides, the existing handover schemes for other wireless networks are not suitable for the mobility scenarios in the LTE networks due to their inherent vulnerabilities. In this paper, we propose a fast and secure handover authentication scheme, which is to fit in with most of the mobility scenarios in the LTE networks. Compared with other handover schemes, our scheme cannot only achieve a simple authentication process with desirable efficiency, but also provide several security features including perfect forward/backward secrecy (PFS/PBS), which have never been achieved by the previous works. The experiment results and formal verification by using the automated validation of internet security protocols and applications (AVISPA) tool show that the proposed scheme is efficient and secure against various malicious attacks.     

Analysis and performance evaluation of an efficient handover algorithm for cognitive HetNets

Cognitive heterogeneous network is a promising technology to meet the requirements of future wireless networks in cost and energy efficiency. By using vertical handover (VHO) between different network tiers, such as macro and femto, the traffic congestion can be potentially alleviated, and the spectral efficiency is significantly increased. However, performing VHO for a cognitive handover user (CHU) and simultaneously guaranteeing the quality of service of the primary user (PU) is the most challenging issue in such a network. This paper proposes an efficient VHO strategy in a cognitive heterogeneous network, which considers both adaptive average received signal and spectrum availability, namely, average received signal and spectrum availability. To analyse the performance of the proposed average received signal and spectrum availability algorithm, several metrics are investigated. First, the assignment probability of a CHU from a macro base station to a femto base station is evaluated and simplified in a closed‐form expression. Then, the outage probability of a CHU and collision probability of the PU are theoretically investigated for the proposed algorithm and are compared with 2 well‐known algorithms, the modified received signal strength–α and the received signal strength and wireless transmission loss. We also introduce a new performance metric, referred to as figure of merit, which jointly considers the assignment and outage probability of a CHU, collision probability of a PU, and the number of unnecessary handovers of a CHU. Figure of merit effectively shows the superiority of the proposed handover algorithm to conventional ones.     

Hierarchical mobility management for fast handoff and load distribution in IPv6 networks

Hierarchical Mobile IPv6 (HMIPv6) has been proposed by the Internet engineering task force (IETF) to compensate for such problems as handover latency and signalling overhead when employing Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6). HMIPv6 supports micro‐mobility within a domain and introduces a new entity, namely mobility anchor point (MAP) as a local home agent (HA). However, HMIPv6 has caused load concentration at a particular MAP and longer handover latency when an inter‐domain handover occurs. In order to solve such problems, this paper establishes a virtual domain (VD) of a higher layer MAP and proposes a MAP changing scheme. The MAP changing scheme enables complete handover by using binding‐update of the on‐link care of address (LCoA) only when inter‐domain handover occurs. In addition, the concentrated load of a particular MAP is distributed as well. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Software‐defined networking to improve handover in mobile edge networks

Mobility management and handover for a seamless connection are among all‐time challenges of wireless networks. Software‐defined networking (SDN) has opened new horizons toward research by adding intelligence in edge networks while decoupling the control and data planes. The flexibility and centralized nature of SDN further improve the handover decision algorithms. In this paper, we have improved the network performance with respect to the number of handovers and the handover delay by applying an LTE‐SDN architecture and a novel handover decision algorithm based on predicting the future locations of a moving vehicle. The proposed algorithm decouples the handover procedure into two phases of preparation and execution. In the preparation phase, which occurs in the control plane, the handover decision and resource allocation take place, and in the execution phase, handover gets executed similar to the LTE architecture. The results of our research indicate that our proposed LTE‐SDN performance is improved with respect to the number of handovers, handover delay, and signaling overhead by 24%, 16%, and 20%, respectively. On the other hand, average Reference Signal Received Quality (RSRQ) value is decreased by 4% as a tradeoff for the improvements gained.     

Dynamic PCI allocation on avoiding handover confusion via cell status prediction in LTE heterogeneous small cell networks

In this paper, we investigate the inbound handover confusion in the two‐tier macrocell‐small cell networks with help of mobility prediction. Instead of studying the mobile user's (MU) movement, we propose an analytical model for the activity status of small cells, which is to exploit the statistical property of inbound handover events that would happen in small cells. We design the cell status prediction algorithm to obtain the optimal prediction outcome of the next status for the small cells. On avoiding the handover confusion, we develop a dynamic allocation approach of physical cell identifier according to the prediction results. We design (i) the cell status prediction‐based strategy, by which the dedicated PCIs will be assigned to the small cells with busy activity status while the other small cells share the public PCIs, and (ii) an integrated strategy in order to fully exploit the usage of PCI. We formulate the preference relation for small cells via reference signal received quality relation integrated with status prediction information using Bayesian average method. Simulation results reveal that the proposed algorithms yield higher accuracy than the conventional methods; in the meantime, handover confusions can be reduced significantly during the inbound handover. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Satellite handover techniques for LEO networks

Low earth orbit satellite constellations could play an important role in future mobile communication networks due to their characteristics, such as global coverage and low propagation delays. However, because of the non‐stationarity of the satellites, a call may be subjected to handovers, which can be cell or satellite handovers. Quite many techniques have been proposed in the literature dealing with the cell handover issue. In this paper, a satellite handover procedure is proposed, that investigates and exploits the partial satellite diversity (namely, the existing common coverage area between contiguous satellites) in order to provide an efficient handover strategy, based always on a tradeoff of blocking and forced termination probabilities for a fair treatment of new and handover calls. Three different criteria were examined for the selection of a satellite. Each one of them could be applied either to new or handover calls, therefore we investigated nine different service schemes. A simulation tool was implemented in order to compare the different service schemes and simulation results are presented at the end of the paper. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Self‐optimizing neighbor cell list with dynamic threshold for handover purposes in networks with small cells

To select a proper target cell for handover of mobile users, signal level of cells in user's neighborhood is scanned by a user equipment (UE). Cells assumed to be scanned are included in the so‐called neighbor cell list (NCL). Conventionally, the NCL is managed according to the probability of handover of users to a target cell with fixed threshold. Nevertheless, the size of NCL could be significant if this approach is applied to networks with small cells. In this paper, we exploit knowledge of handover probability among cells derived from a handover history to reduce the amount of scanned cells. We introduce dynamic adaptation of the amount of cells to be scanned according to the quality of signal of a serving cell, measured by the UE. We also investigate impact of relation between the handover probability and the signal level to maximize efficiency of this approach. Further, the NCL management considering either summarized handover history of all UE or individual history of each user is compared in our evaluations. As the results show, both methods notably reduce the amount of cells to be scanned, while call drop rate and outage of the users are still negligible as in the conventional way. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Congestion‐Aware Handover in LTE Systems for Load Balancing in Transport Network

Long‐Term Evolution employs a hard handover procedure. To reduce the interruption of data flow, downlink data is forwarded from the serving eNodeB (eNB) to the target eNB during handover. In cellular networks, unbalanced loads may lead to congestion in both the radio network and the backhaul network, resulting in bad end‐to‐end performance as well as causing unfairness among the users sharing the bottleneck link. This work focuses on congestion in the transport network. Handovers toward less loaded cells can help redistribute the load of the bottleneck link; such a mechanism is known as load balancing. The results show that the introduction of such a handover mechanism into the simulation environment positively influences the system performance. This is because terminals spend more time in the cell; hence, a better reception is offered. The utilization of load balancing can be used to further improve the performance of cellular systems that are experiencing congestion on a bottleneck link due to an uneven load.     

A smart handover prediction system based on curve fitting model for Fast Mobile IPv6 in wireless networks

Seamless handover process is essential in order to provide efficient communication between mobile nodes in wireless local area networks. Despite the importance of a signal strength prediction model to provide seamless handovers, it is not embedded in standard mobility management protocols. In this article, we propose a smart handover prediction system based on curve fitting model to perform the handover (CHP) algorithm. The received signal strength indicator parameter, from scanning phase, is considered as an input to the CHP in order to provide a prediction technique for a mobile node to estimate the received signal strength value for the access points in the neighborhood and to select the best candidate access point from them in an intelligent way. We implemented the proposed approach and compared it with standard protocols and linear regression‐based handover prediction approach. Simulation results in complex wireless environments show that our CHP approach performs the best by predicting the received signal strength value with up to 800 ms in advance from real obtained value via scanning phase. Moreover, our CHP approach is the best in terms of layer 2 and overall handover latency, in comparison with standard protocols and linear regression approach, respectively. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Interference and Resource management strategy for handover in femtocells

Interference in femtocells due to neighboring femtocells and macrocells is a major issue of two-tier networks. Handover should be made to reduce interference, if and only if, when resources are available. Otherwise, it will further degrade network performance. Resource management should be made in an efficient manner that will not cause interference between macrocells and neighboring femtocells. Since distance between macro base station (MBS) and femto access point (FAP) is short, therefore, it is very hard to sustain low handover probability when macro user moves from MBS to FAP. We proposed handover algorithm for uplink co-channel interference mitigation that will make handover decision on the basis of time-to-stay and signal to interference plus noise ratio thresholds along with efficient resource management mechanism to reduce number of handovers and also resolve interference problem.

     

SDN/NFV‐based handover management approach for ultradense 5G mobile networks

With the great increase of connected devices and new types of applications, mobile networks are witnessing exponential growth of traffic volume. To meet emerging requirements, it is widely agreed that the fifth‐generation mobile network will be ultradense and heterogeneous. However, the deployment of a high number of small cells in such networks poses challenges for the mobility management, including frequent, undesired, and ping‐pong handovers, not to mention issues related to increased delay and failure of the handover process. The adoption of software‐defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) technologies into 5G networks offers a new way to address the above‐mentioned challenges. These technologies offer tools and mechanisms to make networks flexible, programmable, and more manageable. The SDN has global network control ability so that various functions such as the handover control can be implemented in the SDN architecture to manage the handover efficiently. In this article, we propose a Software‐Defined Handover (SDHO) solution to optimize the handover in future 5G networks. In particular, we design a Software‐Defined Handover Management Engine (SDHME) to handle the handover control mechanism in 5G ultradense networks. The SDHME is defined in the application plane of the SDN architecture, executed by the control plane to orchestrate the data plane. Simulation results demonstrate that, compared with the conventional LTE handover strategy, the proposed approach significantly reduces the handover failure ratio and handover delay.     

New efficient cross‐layer and multihoming mechanisms at layer 2 for inter‐radio access technology handover between UMTS and WiMAX

Next generation mobile networks will provide seamless mobility between existing cellular systems and other wireless access technologies. To realize a seamless vertical handover (inter‐radio access technology handover) among these different access technologies, a multi‐interfaced mobile station (i.e., multihomed) is a good approach to provide better handover performance in terms of packet loss rate and handover latency. In this article, we propose a novel layer 2 multihoming approach for inter‐radio access technology handover between Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) and Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) in both integrated and tight coupling architectures. This layer 2 multihoming approach has the ability of enabling either soft handover or make‐before‐break handover to adapt to mobility scenarios for the sake of a lossless and short latency handover procedure. Our simulation results show that, in case of handover from UMTS to WiMAX for transmission control protocol (TCP) traffics, the layer 2 multihoming approach can achieve a lossless and zero latency handover procedure by enabling soft handover. In case of handover from WiMAX to UMTS, because of the fact that the performance gain of soft handover is more affected by the differences of bandwidth and transmission delay between these wireless links, the make‐before‐break handover is preferred to achieve lossless and short latency handover procedure. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Spectrum‐efficiency enhancement in small cell networks with biasing cell association and eICIC: An analytical framework

Load balancing and interference management play crucial roles in small cell network (SCN) capacity and spectrum efficiency (SE) enhancement. By performing load balancing between macrocell and small cells, biasing cell association has attracted great attentions since it is proposed. Additionally, enhanced intercell interference coordination (eICIC) technology is also developed as an efficient interference mitigation method for the biasing cell association‐based SCNs. In this paper, we develop an SE enhancement framework with joint consideration of the eICIC factor and biasing factor. Using the stochastic geometry theory, the network is modeled by spatial Poisson point process. We firstly derive the downlink average rate, which is performed at a typical user. Secondly, the eICIC factor‐related network SE is analyzed by proving the existence of optimal eICIC factor, which maximizes the network SE. For the intractability of the closed‐form expression of optimal eICIC factor, a bisection search‐based algorithm is developed then. At last, numerical results confirm our analysis and show the proposed algorithm performance. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Handover with resource pre-allocation in the OFDMA systems

This article proposed a new handover algorithm for beyond the third generation (B3G) systems with an orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) downlink. In the proposed algorithm, handover mobile termination (MT) chooses a subchannel set in the candidate cells by a subchannel booking rule, based on the terminal speed and the subchannel's channel state information (CSI). Moreover, the handover decision is made after analyzing if at least one candidate cell can reserve the subchannel set for the handover user. Simulation results show that the algorithm reduces the number of handovers and guarantees the quality of service (QoS) for the handover users. It yields better system performance in the OFDMA systems.     

Local and Global Handovers Based on In-Band Signaling in Wireless ATM Networks

This paper presents a handover protocol for wireless ATM networks, which makes use of in-band signaling, i.e., of ATM resource management cells, to process network handovers and guarantee the in-sequence and loss-free delivery of the ATM cells containing user data. The goal of the proposed approach is to minimize the modifications of the ATM signaling standard required to overlay user mobility onto the fixed network infrastructure, and provide for a gradual upgrade of the fixed network to handle mobility. The proposed protocol handles both local handovers, in which the connection access point needs not migrate to a new ATM local exchange, and global handovers, in which the connection access point must migrate to a new local exchange. The handover scheme is devised so as to grant in-sequence delivery of cells. The performance of the network during handover is analyzed in case of connections requiring loss-free operation. The considered performance figures are the cell transmission delay introduced by the handover and the cell buffering requirements posed to the network. The behavior of the proposed protocol in presence of multiple handovers is studied via simulation, while a simple analytical method is derived for the performance evaluation of a single handover in isolation.     

Satellite selection scheme for reducing handover attempts in LEO satellite communication systems

Low earth orbit (LEO) satellite communication systems perform frequent intersatellite handovers for both fixed and mobile users. This paper proposes a satellite selection scheme for new/handover call requests when two or more satellites can be seen simultaneously. Each satellite in this scheme has a non-uniform transmitter antenna gain according to its relative position inside the coverage area. The antenna gain is proportional to the residual distance in the satellite's direction of movement and it compensates for the difference in path losses between satellite links. The residual distance distribution of the selected satellite and the mean number of intersatellite handovers during a call connection are calculated and compared with the results based on conventional methods. The proposed scheme can reduce the intersatellite handover call attempt rate without increasing system load and terminal complexity. Furthermore, this scheme can be extended to reduce both intersatellite and interbeam handover call attempt rates in a multiple spot beam environment. Especially, the average number of intersatellite and interbeam handovers during a call can be significantly reduced by using a hybrid algorithm with the proposed non-uniform power transmission scheme. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Energy‐efficient network selection with mobility pattern awareness in an integrated WiMAX and WiFi network

To provide wireless Internet access, WiFi networks have been deployed in many regions such as buildings and campuses. However, WiFi networks are still insufficient to support ubiquitous wireless service due to their narrow coverage. One possibility to resolve this deficiency is to integrate WiFi networks with the wide‐range WiMAX networks. Under such an integrated WiMAX and WiFi network, how to conduct energy‐efficient handovers is a critical issue. In this paper, we propose a handover scheme with geographic mobility awareness (HGMA), which considers the historical handover patterns of mobile devices. HGMA can conserve the energy of handovering devices from three aspects. First, it prevents mobile devices from triggering unnecessary handovers according to their received signal strength and moving speeds. Second, it contains a handover candidate selection method for mobile devices to intelligently select a subset of WiFi access points or WiMAX relay stations to be scanned. Therefore, mobile devices can reduce their network scanning and thus save their energy. Third, HGMA prefers mobile devices staying in their original WiMAX or WiFi networks. This can prevent mobile devices from consuming too much energy on interface switching. In addition, HGMA prefers the low‐tier WiFi network over the WiMAX network and guarantees the bandwidth requirements of handovering devices. Simulation results show that HGMA can save about 59– 80% of energy consumption of a handover operation, make mobile devices to associate with WiFi networks with 16–62% more probabilities, and increase about 20–61% of QoS satisfaction ratio to handovering devices. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Predictive link trigger mechanism for seamless handovers in heterogeneous wireless networks

Effective and timely link‐layer trigger mechanisms can significantly influence the handover performance. The handover process will not perform the correct decision and execution unless adequate and timely link‐layer trigger information is delivered. In this paper, a predictive link trigger mechanism for seamless horizontal and vertical handovers in heterogeneous wireless networks is proposed. Unlike previous link trigger algorithms based on pre‐defined signal level thresholds, the link layer triggers in this study are adaptively and timely fired in accordance with the network conditions. Firstly, the time required to perform a handover is estimated based on the neighboring network conditions. Secondly, the time to trigger a Link_Going_Down to initiate a handover is determined using a least mean square linear prediction in which the prediction interval (k_h) is dynamically determined based on the estimated handover time. An upper bound for the packet loss rate during a handover is derived for a Gaussian shadowing channel. A manner in which this approach can be applied to IEEE 802.21 is shown in media independent handover scenarios. Simulation results of the proposed predictive link triggering mechanism show that it provides a timely proactive handover. The packet loss rate observed in a Gaussian shadowing channel remains low during a handover. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.