Handover Management for D2D Communication in 5G Networks

This study addresses the handover management issue for Device-to-Device communication in 5G networks. The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) drafted a standard for Proximity Services (ProSe), also named Device-to-Device (D2D) communication, which is a promising technology in offering higher throughput and lower latency services to end-users. Handover is an essential issue in wireless mobile networks due to the mobility of user equipment (UE). Currently, the handover mechanism for D2D pairs is not standardized yet. LTE-A only considers the handover procedure of a single user. Therefore, when a D2D pair moves across cell boundaries, the control channels of the two UEs may connect to different base stations and result in increased latency. Hence, we propose a handover management scheme for D2D communication to encourage both parties of a D2D pair to handover to the same destination eNB at the same time. By doing so, the number of unnecessary handovers, as well as the handover latency, can be reduced. In the proposed method, we predict the destination eNB of D2D users based on their movements and the received signal characteristics. Subsequently, we make a handover decision for each D2D pair by jointly factoring in the signal quality and connection stability. Expected improvement can be attained, as revealed in the simulation.