Handover in Multihop Cellular Networks

This article introduces various handover scenarios in multihop cellular networks. In addition, this article presents handover schemes where relay stations are located either inside a cell or on the boundary between two adjacent cells and investigates the effects of the deployment position of relay stations to handover performance. The simulation results show that multihop cellular networks for both deployment scenarios can achieve 90 percent throughput increase over single-hop cellular networks. The results also show that the overall throughput of the multihop cellular networks with relay stations inside a cell is higher than for those with relay stations on the boundary between two adjacent cells, whereas the opposite is observed for the throughput of cell-boundary users. The intercell handover latency in multihop cellular networks is increased by 20 similar to 56 percent compared with that in single-hop cellular networks because of the increased number of handovers and signaling overhead. However, by deploying relay stations on the boundary between two adjacent cells, the service-interruption time caused by inter-cell handover is reduced by 80 percent compared with that of single-hop cellular networks.