Efficient and Prompt Handover in LTE-based Systems by Predicting the Target eNodeBs

Handover is an essential issue in wireless networks including the Long Term Evolution (LTE) system, especially for high-speed real-time service. An efficient handover scheme with the prediction of candidate target eNodeBs and prompt handover decision is proposed in this paper. By referring to the previous positions of the user equipment (UE), the proposed scheme decides the zone where the potential target eNodeBs are located. The weight of a candidate eNodeB is increased by one in each measurement period if it is identified as a potential target for handover. The target eNodeB of the highest weight is finally selected if it has available bandwidth. The proposed scheme promptly triggers handover any time even before the time-to-trigger (TTT) window expires if the power of received signal rapidly grows. The proposed scheme is evaluated in terms of packet drop rate, packet delay and goodput per cell. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme significantly improve the performance of handover compared to the standard handover scheme adopted in LTE.