Access and Handover Management for Femtocell Systems

Abstract

In this paper a simple and effective method has been proposed to perform access and handover management for femtocell systems. Firstly an analysis on interference impact on femtocells has been provided. Then we explore several techniques to address the interference problem between CSG (closed subscriber group) femtocell and macrocell. When a non-CSG MS comes close to the femtocell in question, the macrocell BS makes the decision (based on the CSG access list exchanged from the femtocell) that unnecessary handover will not be initiated, saving radio resource and signaling load on the network. At the same time various proactive interference mitigation mechanisms can be operated. A hybrid access mode and a femtocell-initiated handover procedure with adaptive threshold have also been discussed.