A Vertical Handover Algorithm in Integrated Macrocell Femtocell Networks

Abstract

The explosion in wireless telecommunication technologies has lead to a huge increase in the number of mobile users. The greater dependency on the mobile devices has raised the user’s expectations to always remain best connected. In the process, the user is always desiring good signal strength even at certain black spots and indoors. Moreover, the exponential growth of the number of mobile devices has overloaded macrocells. Femtocells have emerged out as a good promising solution for complete coverage indoors and for offloading macrocell. Therefore, a new handover strategy between femtocells and macrocell is proposed in this paper. The proposed handover algorithm is mainly based on calculating equivalent received signal strength along with dynamic margin for performing handover. The simulation results of proposed algorithm are compared with the traditional algorithm. The proposed strategy shows improvement in two major performance parameters namely reduction in unnecessary handovers and Packet Loss Ratio. The quantitative analysis further shows 55.27% and 23.03% reduction in packet loss ratio and 61.85% and 36.78% reduction in unnecessary handovers at a speed of 120kmph and 30kmph respectively. Moreover, the proposed algorithm proves to be an efficient solution for both slow and fast moving vehicles.