Handover procedure and decision strategy in LTE-based femtocell network

Wireless systems have the capability to serve users over broad geographic area without using a costly network infrastructure. However, the main drawback of these systems represents the bandwidth restrictions and coverage. Deployment of femtocell as the emerging promising wireless access technology becomes one of possible solution how to overcome some of the drawbacks. In this paper, we investigate the handover procedure in femtocell network considering, both types of handovers, horizontal and vertical. The 3GPP LTE based handover procedure is analysed for three scenarios: hand-in, hand-out and inter-FAP. In addition, the reactive handover decision policy, based on the prediction of user movement and the prediction of target-FAP, is proposed as a way to eliminate frequent and unnecessary handovers.