Handover decision algorithm based on available data volume in hierarchical macro/femto-cell networks

Hierarchical macro/femto-cell networks are considered a promising technology to increase overall network coverage and bandwidth at a relatively low cost. In these emerging networks, a large number of femtocells are deployed within a macrocell. When a macrocell includes many femtocells, the number of handovers greatly increases because handover from the macrocell to the femtocell is executed frequently. However, frequent handovers increase overhead due to handover management as well as latency due to handover interruption. In this paper, we propose an efficient handover decision algorithm based on available data volume to reduce the unnecessary handovers and increase the throughput. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm effectively reduces the number of unnecessary handovers while improving the throughput compared to a conventional RSS based algorithm.