Handover management in beyond 5G HetNet topologies with unbalanced user distribution^☆

Abstract

The increase in user mobility and density in modern cellular networks increases the risk of overloading certain base stations in popular locations such as shopping malls or stadiums, which can result in connection loss for some users. To combat this, the traffic load of base stations should be kept as balanced as possible. In this paper, we propose an efficient load balancing-aware handover algorithm for highly dynamic beyond 5G heterogeneous networks by assigning mobile users to base stations with lighter loads when a handover is performed. The proposed algorithm is evaluated in a scenario with users having different levels of mobility, such as pedestrians and vehicles, and is shown to outperform the conventional handover mechanism, as well as another algorithm from the literature. As a secondary benefit, the overall energy consumption in the network is shown to be reduced with the proposed algorithm.

Keywords

Beyond 5G / Handover management / Load balancing / Markov chain / Poisson point process / Poisson hole process / Ultra-dense heterogeneous network

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Abdussamet Hatipoglu: Writing - review & editing, Writing - original draft, Validation, Software, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Conceptualization. Mehmet Akif Yazici: Writing - review & editing, Writing - original draft, Validation, Supervision, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Conceptualization. Mehmet Basaran: Writing - review & editing, Writing - original draft, Validation, Supervision, Software, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Conceptualization. Mine Ardanuc: Methodology, Investigation. Lutfiye Durak-Ata: Supervision, Methodology, Investigation, Conceptualization.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the Istanbul Technical University Scientific Research Projects Coordination Unit under Grant FHD-2024-45764, and in part by TUBITAK 1515 Frontier R&D Laboratories Support Program for Turkcell 6GEN LAB under Grant 5229902. Turkcell Technology R&D Center (Law no. 5746) has partially supported this study.

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