A Reliable Target Evolved Node B Selection Scheme in LTE-Advanced Handover

The problem of improving the handover performance in Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-A) networks has not been fully solved yet. Traditionally, the selection of the target Evolved Node B (TeNB) in the handover procedure is based on the signal strength measurements, which may not produce a reliable handover. A reliable handover method may reduce the instances of unstable or frequent handovers that otherwise waste network resources. The signal strength measurement process is inherently time consuming as the user equipment (UE) has to measure multiple neighboring eNB (NeNB) frequencies in each measurement period. An efficient handover method is required to improve the overall performance of such systems. In this paper we propose a reliable and fast TeNB selection scheme for LTE-A handover. The proposed scheme outperforms the existing LTE-A handover methods. The improved performance is achieved by selecting the TeNB based on some three independent parameters, namely orientation matching (OM), current load (CL), and the received signal strengths. An UE essentially measures only the NeNBs shortlisted based on OM and CL; thus measurement time is reduced considerably leading to a reduction of overall handover time. The performance of the proposed scheme is validated by simulation.