Efficient Handover Approach in 5G Mobile Networks

Femtocell technology has improved cellular coverage and capacity allowing the provision of rich and interactive communication services in current mobile networks. However, this technology suffers from several drawbacks including; increased interference and packet loss, frequent handovers, and high energy consumption. This paper presents a new handover management approach to overcome performance limitations linked to handover taking place at dense femtocell environments. RSSI of Base Station (BS), mobile user’s movement direction, and BS available capacity are factors used in this work to improve handover decision while sustaining perceived network performance. In addition, in order to reduce the complexity and delay of handover process, the proposed approach has redefined handover major phases including; preparation, decision and execution phases. A densely deployed simulated environment representing heterogeneous 4G and 5G architecture was implemented to evaluate the proposed approach. The simulation environment consists of three paths, each path represents a different network and mobility condition including BS distribution, obstacles, UE movement direction and distance. Results confirmed that the proposed handover approach reported an improved performance in terms of handover delay and number of unnecessary handovers. The average number of handovers occurred during all simulation scenarios was 3, also the average handover delay achieved was (55.15 ms). The number of handovers were decreased 30% and handover delay was reduced more than 10 ms comparing to conventional handover approaches such RSS-based. Hence, an improved adoption of handover management into femotocell environment.