A multi-criteria handover algorithm for UE energy efficiency and cell load balance in dense HetNets

Dense Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets) can improve the capacity and spectrum efficiency of communication system. However, dense HetNets greatly complicate the handover decision, due to the small-coverage cells. The small-coverage cells result in high handover probability, which increases the probability of radio link failure. Moreover, it's significant to save energy of transmit power consumption at user equipment (UE) in dense HetNets, so as to reduce the interference and extend battery lifetime of UE. In addition, with large variation of UE density in HetNets, the traffic load of cells is usually distributed unevenly, which leads to low resource utilization in light-load cells and network congestion in heavy-load cells. In this paper, we propose a multi-criteria handover decision algorithm for dense HetNets, which can significantly a) reduce the handover probability, b) improve the energy efficiency of transmit power consumption at UE and c) balance the load of cells. The performance of proposed algorithm is validated against other existing algorithms based on the simulation results.