Analysis of handoff interference along arbitrary trajectories in cellular networks

We introduce an important system performance measure related to handoff called handoff interference, which characterizes the additional interference noise induced by the handoff process. The handoff interference experienced by a mobile unit is determined by the parameters of the handoff algorithm and is critical for accurate evaluation of the wireless system capacity in the context of multiple cell and user scenarios. We develop an efficient numerical procedure to compute the handoff interference along arbitrary trajectories in a cellular network. We present numerical results showing the tradeoff between the handoff interference and the number of handoffs along a given trajectory, which should be taken into account in dimensioning the handoff parameters to optimize system performance.