Performance of movement direction distance-based vertical handover algorithm under various femtocell distributions in HetNet

The LTE-A networks system depends solely on the Hard HandOver (HHO) to allow the user to migrate among the cells. The HHO procedure depends mainly on the Received Signal Strength (RSS) along with the hysteresis parameters to trigger the procedure. However, the scenario still produces high handover probability and throughput degradation due to the severe interference when high density of the femtocells has been deployed. In this paper, new multi-criteria handover decision parameters are proposed to support the handover decision in both the dense macro-cell and the femtocell environment. The User Equipment (UE) moving direction and the distance between the UE and the femtocells are selected to assist handover decision in heterogeneous network. The proposed Movement Direction Distance-Based Vertical Handover Decision (MDD-VHD) algorithm has been simulated and evaluated under three femtocells distribution scenarios. The simulation results show that ratios of the packet delay and loss are improved as the femtocell deployment is distributed from the middle towards cell-edge by 85% and 60% respectively.