Optimal handover scheme for device‐to‐device communication in highly mobile LTE HetNets

Summary Device‐to‐device (D2D) communication was primarily proposed as a new concept to improve the cellular network performance by allowing direct communications among user equipment (UE). Because of the mobile nature of the UE, the D2D link tends to fail more often. In order to guarantee seamless proximity service (ProSe) continuity for the mobile devices, a competent mobility management technique is necessary. In this work, an optimal D2D handover (HO) scheme in LTE heterogeneous network is proposed for guaranteeing seamless ProSe continuity for the UE in D2D communication. The proposed optimal D2D HO scheme tries to improve the duration of D2D communication by not only considering the signal quality between the D2D UE pairs but also the distance between them. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme improves the D2D mode duration, even in high mobility, thereby reducing frequent HO of the D2D UE, which is in D2D communication. The proposed handover (HO) scheme improves the device‐to‐device (D2D) mode duration by reducing frequent HO of the D2D user equipment (UE), which is in D2D communication. When a HO is required for D2D UE (DUE), inter‐DUE distance (D2Ddist) and signal quality between DUE pair (d2dSINR) are considered by the evolved Node B (eNB) before performing HO.