Discuss handover management problems in ultra-dense networks.

[10 marks]

UDN (Ultra-Dense Network) is expected to be the most dominant way to resolve large scale data management in
5G. Increasing the number of cells in a finite area bring the cells closer together increases the handover rate since
the in the user’s trajectory, he crosses more cells in a small time period[ CITATION Ele18 \l 2057 ]. Users are
then expected to allow more resources in handover management rather than data traffic subsequently causing a
degradation in QoS. Conventional handover processes have an inherent delay known as the “handover delay”
[ CITATION Ele18 \l 2057 ]. It is defined as the time that the Mobile Station (MS) takes to transition from
station to another. This delay affects the QoS, implementation of such system in a dense network would cause
the drastic drop in QoS to shadow the throughput gain achieved [ CITATION Tuğ17 \l 2057 ]. One such
problem is the “ping-pong handover” which occurs when the MS transition quickly back and forth between a
target cell and the current cell[ CITATION Jia15 \l 2057 ][ CITATION DLó12 \l 2057 ]. This give rise to a
signaling storm that causes a spike in the network resources usage that can increase the rate of handover failures.
In a study by [ CITATION YTe17 \l 2057 ], the effect of handover by CSI inspection was studied in 2 settings. It
was found that in ultra-dense/sparse network the handover failure probability was rather small but quickly rose
in dense network. The user’s speed and CSI imperfection were the main reasons. The figure below illustrates the
problems associated with network densification.

Figure 1 UDN Handover Problems tree

Mobility management in Ultra-Dense Network has driven much research in determining new techniques from
different perspectives. In [ CITATION KVa15 \l 2057 ], the authors studies by simulations how different
parameters like Time to Trigger(TTT), User velocity, shadowing & fading affect the handover process. Berk
Canberk et. al take another approach in [ CITATION Tuğ17 \l 2057 ] by using an SDN approach to handover
management. The simulation results presented a 20% decrease in delay when compared to conventional
mechanism. Moreover, [ CITATION Ele18 \l 2057 ] propose 2 handover skipping techniques; one that depends
on a single base station and another that uses base station corporation. The techniques managed to maintain a
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good QoS by skipping over unnecessary handovers reducing both the handover rate and handover cost at high
velocities.

References

[1] C. P. a. I. K. Eleni Demarchou, "Mobility Management in Ultra-Dense Networks: Handover Skipping

Techniques," KIOS Research Center for Intelligent Systems and Networks, Cyprus, 2018.
[2] B. C. a. K. R. C. Tuğçe Bilen, "Handover Management in Software-Defined Ultra-Dense 5G Networks,"
IEEE Network, vol. 31, no. 4, pp. 49-55, 2017.
[3] J. F. L. Z. W. Jiaxin Zhang, "Mobility enhancement and performance evaluation for 5G Ultra dense
Networks," in IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference , 2015.
[4] I. G. a. X. C. D. López-Pérez, "Theoretical Analysis of Handover Failure and Ping-Pong Rates for
Heterogeneous Networks," Proc. 2012 IEEE ICC, pp. 6774-6779, 2012.
[5] M. L. a. M. S. Y. Teng, "Effect of Outdated CSI on Handover Decisions in Dense Networks," IEEE
Communications Letters,, vol. 21, no. 10, pp. 2238-2241, 2017.
[6] M. S. D. L.-P. a. İ. G. K. Vasudeva, "Analysis of Handover Failures in Heterogeneous Networks with
Fading," IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, vol. 66, no. 7, pp. 6060-6074, 2015.

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