Traffic Offloading with Mobility in LTE HeNB Networks

In these years, the traffic is rapidly increasing in mobile communication networks. The increasing traffic seriously consumes the bandwidth of the core network. The 3GPP proposes a series of traffic offloading solutions in the Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-A) system in which part of traffic from the core network is migrated to the Internet. Two traffic offloading methods are designed for the Home eNodeB (HeNB) networks: (1) Local IP Access (LIPA), which provides User Equipments (UEs) with the ability to communicate with other objects (e.g., UEs and servers) located in the same local HeNB network via HeNB without accessing the core network, and (2) Selected IP Traffic Offload at Local Network (SIPTO@LN), which provides UEs with the ability to connect to the Internet via HeNB without going to the core network. Several studies tried to improve 3GPP traffic offloading methods; however, those methods have no or little support of mobility. In this paper, we propose two methods to offload the traffic in Local HeNB Network (LHN) with better mobility support than existing methods. The first method, Local Access Traffic Offload (LATO), enhances the LIPA function by providing UEs with the ability to hand over into and out of the LHN. The second method, Global Access Traffic Offload (GATO), enhances the SIPTO function by providing UEs with the ability to hand over between the LHNs.