Accumulative distance based optimized scanning for a LTE network

Abstract

Mobility in any network is an issue when the User Equipment (UE) moves and is handed over between evolved NodeB (eNBs). These unnecessary handovers lead to additional eNB scanning, handover delay, MAC overhead and it will have impact on real time applications. The reduction in the scanning delay is vital in any network as all the data transmissions are paused until the handover procedure is completed. In this paper authors have made an attempt to predict the direction of movement of the User Equipment (UE) of LTE network in order to overcome the handover issues. This uses a scheme known as Mobile Station (MS) movement direction prediction (MMDP) based handover. In this method, only selected eNBs will be involved in the process of scanning. Hence repeated scanning of all neighboring Base stations is avoided and only shortlisted Base Stations are scanned. Further the available free channels and the received signal strength (RSSI) values are considered to select the potential target eNB.