Handover methods in carrier aggregation environment

• Published in: ICCTA 2011 : IET International Conference on Communication Technology and Application : 14-16 October 2011 pp. 213 - 217
• Main Authors: Li, Mingju, Liu, Liu, She, Xiaoming, Chen, Lan
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Stevenage IET 2011; The Institution of Engineering & Technology
• Subjects: Mobile radio systems; Network management; component carrier; serving cell; carrier aggregation environment; multiple cells; user equipment; channel condition; LTE-A; mobility management (mobile radio); handover methods; handover decision process; Long Term Evolution
• ISBN: 9781849194709; 184919470X
• DOI: 10.1049/cp.2011.0661

Carrier aggregation is one of important technologies to improve the performance of LTE-A. When carrier aggregation is conducted, UE will have a set of serving cells (Component Carrier, CC), which introduces some new problems during handover decision process. By traditional handover method, channel condition of only one serving cell is considered, a proper set of serving cells can not be selected. In order to solve this problem, this paper proposes two handover methods considering the entire channel condition of multiple cells. Method 1 proposes to adjust handover margin according to difference between PCell and SCell in serving eNB; Method 2 proposes to make handover decision by equivalent channel condition of multiple cells in both serving eNB and neighboring eNB. Simulation results show that proposed methods provide higher cell edge throughput and a much smoother handover with almost same number of handovers.