Improved handover mechanisms to reduce packet forwarding in LTE-Advanced

Providing high capacity and cost effective backhaul is a looming challenge for mobile industry. In a packet-switched wireless communication system such as in the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long term Evolution (LTE), data packets are forwarded between base stations (BSs) during handover over the bachhaul. The Packet Data Convergence Protocol (PDCP) of the source base station (BS) is responsible for forwarding the data packets to the target BS. The paper analyses, evaluates and improves the packet forwarding handover mechanism by reducing the amount of forwarded data between BSs. The performance criteria considered for evaluating these techniques include the PDCP buffer size at the source BS, the uplink Radio Link Control status load and the user object bit rate. We found frequent User Equipment (UE) polling by the packet network during handover helps in considerably reducing the unacknowledged PDCP data packets, and thereby reduces the amount of packet forwarding data, as the source BS has up-to-date information of the UE reception state.