Performance evaluation of macro diversity handover technique for multi-hop relay cellular networks

Macro diversity handover (MDHO) is the process by which the mobile station (MS) communicates with two or more access stations. The list of the access stations is called a diversity set. In this paper, we investigate the performance of an enhanced MDHO technique for TDD-OFDMA-based interference-limited multi-hop relay cellular networks. The enhanced MDHO exploits all the data signals transmitted by the diversity set members of the MS. The performance evaluation is carried out using a system-level simulation. Simulation results show that the enhanced MDHO is more spectrally efficient than conventional MDHO, fast access station switching (FASS) and hard handover (HHO) techniques.