Improvement of LTE Handover Performance through Interference Coordination

Danish Aziz, Rolf Sigle

Radio Access Domain Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, 70435 Stuttgart, Germany Email: {Danish.Aziz, Rolf.Sigle}@alcatel-lucent.de
AbstractAn Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) based radio-interface is specified by 3GPP for LTE system. OFDMA provides efficient spectral efficiency by reusing complete frequency band in all cells. However it projects high Inter Cell Interference (ICI) especially on cell borders. ICI not only minimizes the cell border throughput but also effects on the handover performance in LTE. Hard handover is standardized for LTE systems using L3-filter, hysteresis, and time-to-trigger mechanisms. The UE needs to receive error free Handover Command message for successful handover. This becomes critical when high interference is present on cell borders. Inter Cell Interference Coordination (ICIC) is a technique that has been proposed to overcome ICI problems. We have investigated the improvements of LTE handover performance through ICIC. We have shown that significant gain can be achieved by the use of ICIC while maintaining very low handover rates. Keywords-component; LTE; Hard Handover; Inter Cell Interference Coordination (ICIC)

mechanism. The handovers have a great impact on the complete system performance. Unlike UMTS, hard HO mechanism based on Reference Signal Received Power (RSRP) measurements has been specified for LTE [1]. Filtering of measured RSRP samples, handover hysteresis margin (HOM) and time-to-trigger handover (TTT) mechanisms are provided in LTE to support accurate HO decisions and to avoid frequent handovers [2]. Performance of HO is highly susceptible to ICI in LTE. First of all it occurs on cell borders and secondly the successful HO procedure is completed only when the UE receives the HO Command message from its source cell. At this time, the UE is already in the new cell and the reception of HO Command from previous source cell is badly affected by ICI. The situation becomes more critical when the new target cell is also the strongest interferer. In this case, a coordination mechanism for ICI highly supports the HO mechanism. Therefore we have evaluated here the improvements in LTE HO performance with the help of ICIC. Many studies have been carried out until now with different hard HO algorithms for HO performance optimization. In [3] and [4], adaptive HO algorithms are presented to improve HO performance. LTE specific HO issues are considered in [5], [6] and [7]. An empirical model for HO prediction is presented in [5] for accurate HO decisions. The study in [6] recommends us a range of HOM in dB considering the average number of HO for different user speeds. Context in [7] provides us linear and dB domain L3-filter performance improvements in terms of global number of handovers. Most of these papers have considered individual or combined effects of measurement interval, measurement averaging, hysteresis, and HO threshold levels and improved HO performance by dynamically adapting the HO algorithm or HO parameters. However, the adopted methods seek the best compromise between the number of HO and the radio link failure due to erroneous reception of HO Command message. In this paper we have extended the study of [6] and [7] by simultaneously considering HO algorithm with L3-filter, HOM and TTT. We have shown that ICIC can be used on top of these methods for further improvement in HO performance by improving the radio conditions on cell borders through interference coordination. In section II we present the employed scheme for ICIC and the generic HO algorithm used in our simulations. Section III describes our system simulation models and parameters that

I.

INTRODUCTION

Long Term Evolution (LTE) is the 4th generation cellular mobile system that is being developed and specified in 3GPP as a successor of UMTS. Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) has been adopted by 3GPP as radio access technology for LTE system. OFDMA is selected because it provides high spectral efficiency and robust performance in high mobility scenarios and fading environments. LTE is specified as frequency reuse-1 system to achieve maximum gain and the efficient use of frequency resources. On one side, the optimal use of resources provides higher bit rates and on the other side it generates Inter Cell Interference (ICI) issues with reuse-1 employment. In the absence of any interference mitigation or coordination mechanism, ICI becomes critical in LTE especially on cell borders. Therefore, a number of schemes have been suggested for the solution of ICI. These schemes are categorized as static and dynamic on the basis of their type of interference coordination mechanisms. We have employed a static scheme for ICIC that is also known as Fractional Frequency Reuse. The details of the scheme are presented in section II. Irrespective of the schemes, most of the work to show the performance benefits of ICIC has been done till yet on the basis of the gains in cell border throughput. However another issue that can also be benefited through ICIC is handover (HO)

978-1-4244-2517-4/09/$20.00 2009 IEEE

include channel model, ICIC model and HO performance metrics. The performance results are presented and discussed in Section IV. In the end a concise conclusion in section V describes the gain of ICIC and future perspectives. II. INTERFERENCE COORDINATION AND HANDOVER MECHANISM

B. Measurement Procedure for Handover Network controlled HO is based on the measurements taken by the UE and decision taken thereof by the network (eNodeB of the serving cell).
B A Layer 1 Filtering Layer 3 Filtering HO Evaluation Criteria Event Triggered Reporting

A. Fractional Frequency Reuse One of the solutions to mitigate ICI is provided by using standard frequency reuse pattern. It is not appreciated in LTE due to the decrease in spectral efficiency and wastage of precious frequency resources. However, any ICIC scheme limits the use of available system resources in some manner. Efficient schemes seek that the limitation has minimum effect on other aspects of system performance and provide maximum gain in spectral efficiency. The basic concept used in this study for ICIC is taken from [9] according to which, the whole frequency band is divided into R subsets. Each cell in the network transmits at least one subset with reduced power as shown in figure 1. The subset with reduced transmit power is configured according to a reuse pattern in the network. The configuration may be done either by network planning or by employing new self-configuration techniques. Figure 2 shows an example reuse pattern with R=7. The knowledge of the subset with reduced power of the cell and its neighbors provides the basis for interference coordination.
P Pl

Filter Parameter

HO Parameters

Figure 3: Measurements and processing for handover Figure 3 shows the model that has been used as working assumption in 3GPP for HO in LTE. At point A the UE measures RSRP by coherently adding reference symbols (pilot signals) power within the sub-frame over the complete measurement bandwidth. Then the measured samples at A can be averaged incoherently by L1 filter (the art of L1 filtering is not standardized) and is sampled at point B after every measurement period. The complete system bandwidth is taken as measurement bandwidth in this study to neglect the measurement errors and to meet the standard measurement accuracy requirements. The L3- filter function is taken from [2] and can be written as,

n rn = {1 (1 / 2) K / 4 }.rn1 + (1 / 2) K / 4 . q
Where,

(1)

rn is the updated filtered measurement result rn 1 is the old filtered measurement result
point B

F1

Fn

FR

Figure 1: Power allocation for frequency subsets [9]

n q is the latest received measurement result at

1 2 6 7

5 6 3 4 1 5 2 1 6 3 7 4

2 3 7 1 5 6 1 3 4 1

6 4 5 2 1 3 7 1 5 6

K is the filter coefficient provided by the network.

2 7

C. Handover Algorithm The UE monitors the filtered RSRP of all detected cells. When the condition in (2) holds for the given TTT, the UE sends the measurement report to the eNodeB of the serving cell.

rn i rn s + h
Where,

(2)

Figure 2: Fractional frequency reuse pattern with reuse factor 7 [9] The optimum gain from the scheme is achieved when the scheduling algorithm serves the UEs at cell borders with the frequency subset that is used with reduced power in the neighboring cell.

rn i is the nth sample of filtered RSRP of any

detected sector i other than the serving sector

rn s is the nth sample of filtered RSRP of the

serving sector, and

h is the given HOM.

Figure 4 depicts the HO algorithm and important instances.

Filtered RSRP [dB]

Serving Sector

delay of the taps can be found in [10]. The channel is updated in each TTI.
Parameter
HOM(dB)

Cellular layout Inter-Site Distance Path Loss Shadowing Standard Deviation Shadowing Correlation distance Shadowing Correlation b/w sectors Shadowing Correlation b/w eNBs Carrier Frequency TTI (sub-frame length) UE noise figure Min. distance b/w UE & Site UE direction L1 sampling L3 sampling period at point B No. of HARQ re-transmissions MCS for HO Command Horizontal antenna pattern

Any Sector (Future Target)

TTT (ms) Start Of TTT

Assumption Hexagonal grid, 7 sites, 21 sectors, wrap around 500 m 128.1+37.6 log10(R in km)dB 8 dB 50 m 0.9 0.5 2GHz 1ms 9 dB 35 m UD, Range [0, 2] 50 ms 200 ms 4 QPSK, C.R. 1/9 2 A( ) = min 12 , Am 3dB

P(ms)

HO HO Time Decision Command

Figure 4: Hard handover algorithm After receiving the report, the current serving eNodeB prepares to HO the UE to the new target cell using a network internal procedure. It is assumed that the target cell has always resources available for the incoming UE. The preparation time is modeled here as a constant protocol delay and shown in figure 4 as P. After the preparation has completed, the serving cell sends the HO Command message to the UE in downlink. III. MODELING AND SIMULATION

The algorithms described in section II were modeled and simulated in our LTE downlink system simulator. Micro cellular environment with hexagonal grid layout is simulated. Tri-sector sites are used. Each sector has fixed antenna pattern as given in table 1. To avoid border effects, wrap-around technique in compliance with 3GPP is used. User data is considered by modeling full buffer traffic which results in full load for the cells. The mobiles are distributed uniformly over the whole simulated area. The number of mobiles during the simulation remains fixed. The mobiles move with a constant velocity. The direction of motion of each mobile is randomly selected through a uniform distribution in the beginning of each simulation. The gain from the HARQ re-transmissions is also considered for the transmission of HO Command. The details of channel model, ICIC model and HO performance metrics are given in the following sub sections. The set of important simulation parameters that are chosen in accordance with [8] are given in table 1. A. Channel Propagation Model It is well-known that the signal received at the mobile is affected through the distance dependent path loss, shadow fading and fast fading. Path loss and shadow fading are modeled as specified in [8]. The specified shadow fading is a Gaussian process with standard deviation and zero mean. The negative exponential correlation function as given in (3) is used to produce spatially correlated shadowing samples.

3dB

= 70 degrees, Am = 20 dB

Table 1: Simulation assumptions and parameters B. ICIC Model As explained earlier, the interference coordination is supposed to work with the help of a scheduler. The scheduler takes care of the task that the UEs that are present in the cell border regions shall possibly be scheduled on the frequency subsets which are used with reduced power in the strongest interferer. In order to study the impact of ICIC on HO performance we have not used any specific scheduling algorithm. However, we have assumed that the transmission of HO Command message has been done with the subset that is reduced in its strongest interferer. In most of the cases, the HO candidate selected as the target for the HO is the strongest interferer. The sharing of information between the cells about the reduced frequency subset is modeled with the help of a preassigned reuse pattern. C. Handover Performance Metrics Until the HO Command message is received, the UE must remain connected to the serving cell which has at least by HOM lower RSRP than the best candidate cell. Hence, the SIR at the time of HO Command message is expected to be quite low leading to a high BLER of this message. If this message gets lost, the UE does not know that it should HO to another cell. During this situation, if the serving cell quality falls below a certain threshold the UE will detect a radio link problem. If this condition lasts for a certain time the UE triggers the radio link failure procedure. In this case the HO is no longer seamless due to interruption of the transmission or even there is a probability of call drop. For this purpose we have considered

R(x) = e

x d corr

ln 2

(3)

Rayleigh distribution is used to model the fast fading. The time variant and multipath nature of the channel is modeled by using the tap delay line channel as recommended in [1]. The model is also known as Reduced Typical Urban. There are 6 taps used to consider the multipath. The details of power and

the Residual BLER for the transmission of HO Command message as one of the performance metric. Inaccurate measurements and inappropriate HO decisions lead to a high number of unnecessary handovers. In order to identify those unnecessary HO, we have to differentiate them from necessary handovers. One of the major reasons for unnecessary handovers is the presence of fading in the real environment. For this reason we have used HO rates without log normal shadowing and without fast fading as a benchmark for the minimum number of required handovers. We normalize the absolute HO rates with the benchmark and use the normalized HO rates as the second performance metric to assess the number of handovers. IV. SIMULATION RESULTS & ANALYSIS
Normalized HO Rates

12 10 8 6 4 2 0

K=0

With ICIC Without ICIC

K=3 K=6 K=9 K=12

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011121314151617181920 Residual BLER [%]

In this section we present the simulation results and their analysis. The measurement bandwidth, L1 measurement interval and L3 measurement period is the same for all the simulations. The graphs presented here are also known as tradeoff curves. As both the plotted metrics need to be reduced therefore a tradeoff between the two needs to be found through parameterization for better performance. Each curve is a result of a set of simulations carried out for a set of HO parameters. All the tradeoff curves in this study present normalized HO rates and Residual BLER. They are plotted by varying filter coefficient K from 0 to 18 with a step of 3. The range of K is specified in [2]. The values of TTT and HOM are fixed for all simulation points on one curve. A. Performance with different values of K Figure 5, shows the tradeoff between normalized HO rate and the residual BLER for the downlink transmission of the HO Command towards the UEs moving with 30 km/h in the simulated environment. The two cases without and with ICIC are shown in the same figure as different curves marked by triangles and squares respectively. As explained above, each point on a curve in figure 5 is simulated for a value of K. In order to analyze the effect of K, the TTT and HOM are kept to zero. It can be seen from the figure, the increase in K decreases the HO rate which is desirable. However it increases the BLER for the HO Command message which is undesired. If we compare the individual points on the curve (e.g. marked by circles) then we see that ICIC provides a drastic improvement in performance in terms of a highly reduced BLER. The absolute gain from ICIC is dependent upon the value of K. Higher K values show the higher gain in ICIC. It is because the lower K values means better channel conditions while receiving HO Command whereas the gain of ICIC becomes significant in higher interference conditions. If we increase the value of K to get lower HO rates then the situation becomes critical and the UE find itself in high interference region while receiving HO Command. Hence the gain of ICIC is prominent with higher values of K. An optimum operating point such as K=9 can be selected with the BLER approaching to 1% using ICIC providing acceptable HO rates. The average relative gain by a factor of 6 can be seen in figure 5.

Figure 5: Tradeoff curves for 30km/h by varying K from 0 to 18 with a step of 3, with TTT=0ms and HOM=0dB B. Performance with different values of TTT and HOM The design of optimum HO also needs to select other parameters like HOM and TTT. They play a good role in reducing the unnecessary HO triggers due to the short term and sudden variations in signal strength because of shadowing and fast fading. Hence it is quite practical to evaluate the ICIC performance for different values of HOM and TTT. Figure 6 and 7 show the ICIC performance for the UEs moving with 30 km/h with different HOM and TTT respectively. In figure 6, TTT is kept constant and two values of HOM are simulated by varying K. Similarly HOM is kept constant in figure 7 and three values of TTT are simulated by varying K. It can be seen that ICIC provides even higher gain as we increase the values of the HO parameters. The reasons are the same as described in sub section A of this section.
12 10 Normalized HO Rates 8 6 4 2 0 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Residual BLER [%]
HOM=0.0 dB_ICIC HOM=0.0 dB_NoICIC HOM=3.0 dB_ICIC HOM=3.0 dB_NoICIC

Figure 6: Tradeoff curves for 30km/h for different HOM by varying K from 0 to 18, with TTT=0ms

12 10 Normalized HO Rates 8 6 4 2 0 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 1617 18 19 20 Residual BLER [%]

TTT=0ms_ICIC TTT=0ms_NoICIC TTT=200ms_ICIC TTT=200ms_NoICIC TTT=400ms_ICIC TTT=400ms_NoICIC

M.Anas, F.D. Calabrese, P.-E-Ostling, K.I..Pedersen,.E. Mogensen, Performance Anaylsis of Handover Measurements and Layer-3 Filtering for UTRAN LTE, 18th International Symposium, PIMRC 2007, IEEE. [8] 3GPP TR 25.814 V7.1.0 (2006-09), Physical Layer Aspects for EUTRA. [9] TDOC R1-050407, Interference Coordination in New OFDM DL Air Interface, 3GPP TSG RAN WG1 #41, Athens, Greece, May 2005 [10] 3GPP TS 05.05 V8.20.0 (2005-11), Radio transmission and reception

[7]

Figure 7: Tradeoff curves for 30km/h for different TTT by varying K from 0 to 18, with HOM=0dB V. CONCLUSION

In this study we have presented a simple ICIC scheme and evaluated its performance on the basis of handovers in LTE. We have shown that optimum HO performance can be achieved through optimum parameters selection by finding a compromise between HO rates and Residual BLER for HO Command message. However, in full high load situations this compromise still provides high Residual BLER that may lead to high probability of radio link failures. To avoid this situation ICIC can be used on top of the parameter optimization. We have shown that ICIC can overcome the radio link failure problem without effecting the HO rates and with different selection of HO parameters. We propose to investigate further the HO performance by using more complex ICIC schemes and with scheduling algorithms. Furthermore we have considered here only one UE speed, however we expect that the ICIC will perform improve the HO performance at all UE speeds. ACKNOWLDEGEMENTS The authors would like to thank Christian Gerlach for contributing the investigated ICIC method in [9]. They extend their gratitude and appreciation to Andreas Weber, Hajo-Erich Bakker, Grob-Lipski Heidrun and Stephen Kaminski for their supportive discussions. REFERENCES
[1] [2] [3] 3GPP TS 36.300 V8.2.0 (2007-09), EUTRA and EUTRAN Overall description 3GPP TS 36.331 V8.2.0 (2008-06), EUTRA Radio Resource Control An Adaptive Hard Handoff Algorithm for Mobile Cellular Communication Systems Huamin Zhu, and Kyung Sup Kwak, ETRI Journal, vol.28, no.5, Oct. 2006, pp.676-679. Prakash, R.; Veeravalli, V.V Adaptive Hard Handoff Algorithms, IEEE Trans. On Vehicular Technology Confeence, 1991. Tae-Hyong Kim Qiping Yang Jae-Hyoung Lee Soon-Gi Park Yeon-Seung Shin A Mobility Management Technique with Simple Handover Prediction for 3G LTE Systems, IEEE Trans. On Vehicular Technology Confeence, 2007. M.Anas, F.D. Calabrese, P.E. Mogensen, C.Rosa and K.I..Pedersen, Performance Evaluation of Received Signal Strength Based Hard Handover for UTRAN LTE, IEEE 65th Vehicular Technology Conference, April 2007.

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