Handover Performance Evaluation Under Dynamic User Characteristics

In mobile networks, maintaining the on-going call is critical while the user is still moving from one evolved node B (eNB) to another eNB or one sector to another sector within the same eNB. This phenomenon is called handover (HO). Proper HO decision avoids the call drop rate and ping-pond which maintains adequate Quality of Service. As HO parameters have competing interests, simultaneous setup of the HO failure and HO ping-pong is difficult problem. Hence, in this paper, the HO performance is evaluated by optimizing the HO control parameters including time to trigger, HO offset, and HO margin. A famous heuristic algorithm called Particle Swarm optimization (PSO) is also integrated to adjust the HO control parameters. Besides, a self-organized network is applied to enhance the network performance by automating the mobility load balancing (MLB) and PSO. The HO ping-pong (HOPP) and HO failure (HOF) are evaluated under dynamic user mobility and traffic loads. The simulation results have shown that the optimization-MLB based HOF and HOPP are significantly improved compared to the ordinary HO performance enhancement techniques.