Handover algorithm with joint processing in LTE-advanced

LTE is a purely packet-switched radio access technology and improves the legacy systems by supporting higher data rates with low latency. Release 8 of LTE has a number of gaps that prevent it from meeting the IMT-Advanced requirements for 4G. Release 10 has been proposed to fulfill the additional requirements. Coordinated multipoint (CoMP) transmission and reception is the key technique in LTE-Advanced to improve the cell-edge throughput and/or system throughput, especially joint processing (JP) in CoMP provides multiple data transmission points among multiple cooperated cells for each user equipment (UE) in the network. The standard handover algorithm in LTE could not satisfy the concept of JP in LTE-Advanced. Therefore a new handover algorithm supports JP in LTE-Advanced is necessary. In this paper, a handover algorithm with JP in LTE-A system is implemented and simulated by a C/C++ simulation tool. Simulation results show that, when compared with the standard handover algorithm in LTE system, handover algorithm with JP in LTE-Advanced is able to improve system throughput and minimize packet loss ratio (PLR) effectively. However this algorithm could lead to system capacity overload and saturated system throughput issues when dealing large amount of UEs in the network.