Optimized handover procedure based on mobile location in cellular systems

Future-generation mobile communications will provide broadband multimedia services to users, anywhere and anytime. On the other hand network performance should be guaranteed to support these applications and services. In existing cellular systems handover is one of the procedures that causes serious network shortcomings. This procedure is much more complicated in next generation systems (UMTS) and is of great interest for investigation and optimization. Both these systems and those of the second generation (GSM & GPRS) will require redefined handover algorithms of active connections as the mobility support is a vital issue for cellular systems. In this paper we present a set of location aided handover mechanisms that use the location information to assist safe handover decisions. The implemented algorithms are validated by means of a cellular network simulator that clearly shows the impact of these techniques to the handover performance. Finally, we briefly describe how this can be integrated in the cellular system architecture.