A Distance-Based Handover Scheme for Femtocell and Macrocell Overlaid Networks

Femtocell is considered as one of the prominent techniques to improve the cellular network coverage and the system capacity, which is applied by installing the femtocell base station, in the place, where there is low signal strength or even without any signal (e.g., home, rural area). In such a network, mobile users should make efficient handover decision when move between macrocell and femtocell. In this paper, we propose a distance-based handover scheme for femtocell and macrocell overlaid area (FMOA). In order to reduce the handover failures and avoid unnecessary handovers, we use a threshold which is calculated by the mobile user as it enters the overlaid area. Numerical simulations are presented to verify the proposed scheme. The results show that the proposed scheme is effective in handover management for both the handover failure minimization and unnecessary handover avoidance in FMOA scenario.