A novel green handover self-optimization algorithm for LTE-A / 5G HetNets

Energy consumption of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in general and wireless mobile networks in particular is rapidly increasing with the exponential growth of data bit rates. For environmental and cost reduction purposes, the telecommunication industry is looking for Green (energy efficient) networks implementation. In this paper, we focus on the Handover procedure in LTE-A / 5G networks where Femtocells are intensively deployed over the Macrocell layer. This type of networks is also known as heterogeneous networks (HetNets). Our major contribution is the proposal of a new Handover self-optimization algorithm that is mainly designed to reduce the energy consumption in the network. The choice of the Handover target cell takes into account the received signal power, the user speed as well as the load of neighbor cells. Performance evaluation results show that our proposed algorithm considerably reduces the energy consumption in the network for all the specific scenarios related to the user speed.