Evaluation of Handover Rates and Outage Probability for the Macrocellular Environment

Statistical models for handover scenarios are necessary in order to identify key parameters and to allow proper benchmarking for handover techniques. This is quite a difficult task, since many assumptions have to be made, resulting in a loss of generality. Efforts towards the generation of such models were already made. Although these models show insights into trade offs, they leave some open questions. It is our purpose to extend previous work by presenting a new model for the macro cellular environment which is based on relative received signal strength technique employing a hysteresis margin and exponential smoothing. This model also incorporates implicitly the effect of the velocity of the mobile terminal on the handover system performance as well as the statistical dependency of consecutive signal strength measurements. We evaluate handover performance parameters such as handover probability, handover delay, expected number of handovers and outage probability. The outcome of this analysis is presented through numerical evaluations of the proposed model.