Micro mobility management for dual connectivity in LTE HetNets

A Dual Connectivity architecture has been proposed by 3GPP for enhancement of small cells in long term evolution heterogeneous networks. A Master eNodeB (MeNB) handles handovers on behalf of the Mobility Management Entity (MME) and the Serving Gateway (SGW) for secondary eNodeBs (SeNB) located within the coverage of MeNB. Workloads of the MME and the SGW are moved to the MeNB. Small cells can be concentrated in crowded downtown or buildings in the heterogeneous network environment. The number of handovers may be increased due to concentrated small cells having small coverage, so the workload of the MeNB can be increased inside the hot spot. We propose a micro mobility management scheme to offload the workload of the MeNB to other components. The proposed scheme introduces a mobility anchor (MA) which processes the handovers between SeNBs on behalf of MeNB. Simulation results indicate the reduction of the workload of the MeNB due to the MA.