Parameters optimization for handover between femtocell and macrocell in LTE-based network

The challenge of removing redundant handover (HO) has gained more importance after the existence and deployment of femtocell in the network. By nature, the existence of femtocell can lead to the increase of handover initiation. However, 3GPP standard provides Mobility Robustness Optimization (MRO) to optimize handover performance. MRO is a use-case for Self-Organizing Network (SON). The conventional MRO algorithm tunes handover parameters based on counts of handover failures and handover events. In addition, conventional MRO algorithm uses hysteresis only to adjust and improve HO performance. In this paper, we propose an improved MRO algorithm by taking into account new optimization parameters, which is Time To Trigger parameter (TTT) to improve MRO algorithm performance in terms of reducing Ping-Pong rate and lower HO failure rate between femtocell and macrocell. We compared our improved MRO algorithm with the conventional one. The simulation results show remarkable improvement of the improved MRO algorithm over the standard one.