A novel mobility-based COMP handover algorithm for LTE-A / 5G HetNets

Abstract

Inter cell interference is one of the most serious problems in LTE-Advanced networks and beyond (5G). This issue is the direct result of two major features: the frequency reuse factor equal to one and the heterogeneous deployment of networks (HetNets). Many solutions have been proposed by the 3GPP project since its early Release 8 in order to mitigate interference. The most recent one is Coordinated Multi Point (CoMP) which implies that a set of transmit points provide coordinated transmission in the downlink. However, this is not possible during Handover scenarios since LTE-Advanced networks and beyond implement hard handover which requires a single connection for each user at any time. In this paper, we propose a new Handover algorithm based on CoMP joint transmission scheme in order to minimize the Inter Cell Interference (ICI). Performance evaluation results show that our proposed algorithm considerably reduces the ICI level and enhances the average throughput per user during Handover.