LTE-advanced mobility performance enhancement in dense small cell environment

The handover of Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) LTE-Advanced is always performed as a hard handover and its mobility performance has been optimized in homogeneous macro cell environment. In this paper, we present new mobility management method that uses three simple algorithms based on its cross-layer architecture as a step to improving mobility performance in dense small cell environment of the 3GPP LTE-Advanced system. The first algorithm uses user equipment (UE) measurements to reserve or release the resource of multiple small cells without a complex prediction method. The second algorithm uses both a filtering method and history information already presented in its standard, and hence can reduce unnecessary handovers. The third algorithm uses the relative signal strength to reduce the number of radio link failures as well as to assist in prediction. In a simulation with two random waypoint models, the proposed mobility management shows a fewer number of handovers and a lower rate of ping pong handovers than baseline mobility management.