A User Behavior Based Handover Optimization Algorithm for LTE Networks

In Long Term Evolution networks, the handover used is a hard handover. Therefore, choosing the handover parameters is critical for the users' satisfaction. Otherwise they will suffer from a high rate of radio link failures. Usually, there are two contradictory handover problems: radio link failures and unnecessary handovers (ping-pongs). Increasing some handover parameters (e.g. handover margin) leads to less ping-pongs, but higher radio link failure. This is not good for the network operators, as a high ping-pongs rate causes a large unnecessary overhead to the network. However, having a high radio link failure decreases the customers' satisfaction, especially the customers using real time data. For the customers using non-real time data (e.g. web browsing and FTP download), the radio link failure problem will not severely affect their satisfaction. In this paper, a new algorithm is introduced to choose the most suitable values of the handover parameters, based on the user's behavior. This is done by categorizing the users in the network into four categories. The categorization is done according to the users' speeds and the data traffic used (real time traffic versus non-real time traffic). The handover parameters in each category are optimized independent from the other categories. The proposed algorithm shows a better performance for each category of users in terms of the most preferred metric for this category compared to dealing with all users as a single category.