LTE Mobility Enhancements for Evolution into 5G

Network densification is regarded as the dominant driver for wireless evolution into the era of 5G. However, in this context, interference-limited dense small cell deployments are facing technical challenges in mobility management. The recently announced results from an LTE field test conducted in a dense urban area show a handover failure (HOF) rate of over 21%. A major cause of HOFs is the transmission failure of handover command (HO CMD) messages. In this paper, we propose two enhancements to HO performance in LTE networks — radio link failure-proactive HO, which helps with the reliable transmission of HO CMD messages while the user equipment is under a poor radio link condition, and Early Handover Preparation with Ping-Pong Avoidance (EHOPPPA) HO, which assures reliable transmission of HO CMD under a good radio link condition. We analyze the HO performance of EHOPPPA HO theoretically, and perform simulations to compare the performance of the proposed schemes with that of standard LTE HO. We show that they can decrease the HOF rate to nearly zero through an analysis, and based on the simulation results, by over 70%, without increasing the ping-pong probability.