Empirical Evaluation of Overlap Requirements of Adjacent Radio Cells for Zero Delay Handover

Velocity has a non-neglectable influence on the handover delay experienced by a user if the handover is triggered on a radio-signal-measurement (RSM) based handover scheme. Previous publications have theoretically derived the minimal required overlap of adjacent radio cells for a zero delay handover if signal averaging (low-pass filtering) and a hysteresis margin are employed in the handover decision process. This paper presents for the first time a practical verification of those results by employing real world channel traces from a high-speed train scenario and considering the effects of an existing radio front-end due to the latter's receiver sensitivity. Also, in addition to related work, we adapt a time-discrete analytical model for comparing theoretical findings with channel trace based results which is closer to an implementation sampling the radio channel's quality at distinct time intervals.