A Simulation Study on Handover in LTE Ultra-Small Cell Deployment: A 5G Challenge

Future cellular networks need to support data hungry applications with enhanced data rates possibly via cell densification (ultra-small cells). The key objective of this work is to study the performance of a cellular network by taking into account the user mobility when LTE ultra-small cell network is deployed. Handover (HO) issues are analyzed considering various cell sizes, user speeds, and HO optimization related parameters. This study is very helpful to realize the problem of HO in 5G standalone network deployment as it shows the impact of LTE ultra-small cell deployment on the HO performance. A system level simulator is used to perform simulation and the results show that, as expected, the ultra-densification results in an increased number of HOs. Also, increasing the offset values have a significant impact on the HO reliability while changing the Time to Trigger (TTT) values has a less-significant impact.