A Handover Scheme for LTE Wireless Networks under the Assistance of GPS

Abstract

With the rising popularity of mobile devices, the requirements of accessing wireless networks through mobile devices have been significantly higher than before. Many researches try their best to develop different communication functions and services to serve users. On the other hand, up to present from 2008 Long Term Evolution (LTE for short) has still stayed in its spotlight. Also, the population of mobile users increases significantly in recent years. When a user equipment (UE for short) moves from an evolved Node B (eNB for short) to another, the LTE needs to perform handover to help the serving and target eNBs to manage the provided resources so as to maintain the connections connecting the UE and the eNBs. If handover incompletely performed, users will experience a longer transmission delay, or even the connections are disconnected. Currently, the factor that affects the time consumed by the handover procedure is still considered as the radio issue. However, it is insufficient if we only measure the strength of the radio that the UE receives from its serving eNB to determine whether UE needs to hand over or not since the UE's location, moving speed and moving direction are also the important factors that may affect the handover quality. In this study, we employs a GPS system to help the determination of handover of the LTE system so as to more accurately choose the most suitable target eNB and improve the performance of handover.