A Velocity and Transmission Environment Based Handover Algorithm for Heterogeneous Networks

Heterogeneous networks have attracted a lot of attention for supporting high data rate and high mobility wireless communications. Since the base station density in heterogeneous networks is much larger than that in homogeneous networks, and the deployment of low power base stations in heterogeneous networks may be unplanned, a mobile user may see a large number of base stations simultaneously. Thus handover management in heterogeneous networks is much more challenging than that in homogeneous networks. In this paper, we address these challenges and propose a heuristic handover algorithm for use in heterogeneous networks. The proposed algorithm uses estimates of user velocity (speed and direction) and the transmission environment to improve the handover performance, i.e., the handover rate and the handover failure rate. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm performs better than the conventional scheme in typical scenarios of heterogeneous networks.