A mobility-aware handoff trigger scheme for seamless connectivity in cellular networks

We present a mobility-aware handoff trigger mechanism that can predict the occurrence of a handoff well in advance of the actual event. Such a scheme could be used to provide smoother handoffs by enabling handoff procedures and pre-allocation of resources to be initiated prior to the actual handoff event. The handoff trigger scheme uses mobility information to predict the occurrence of a handoff event, i.e. the event when the pilot signal strength received from the target base station exceeds that received from the current base station by a given hysteresis level. The handoff trigger scheme is derived from a mobility estimation and prediction scheme, which is based on an autoregressive model or mobility. Simulation results show that the handoff trigger scheme can provide a non-trivial trigger interval with low probabilities of false alarm and missed detection.