Handover between macrocell and femtocell for UMTS based networks

The femtocell networks that use home base station and existing xDSL or other cable line as backhaul connectivity can fulfill the upcoming demand of high data rate for wireless communication system as well as can extend the coverage area. Hence the modified handover procedure for existing networks is needed to support the macrocell/femtocell integrated network. Some modifications of existing network and protocol architecture for the integration of femtocell networks with the existing UMTS based macrocell networks are essential. These modifications change the signal flow for handover procedures due to different 2-tier cell (macrocell and femtocell) environment. The measurement of signal-to-interference ratio parameter should be considered for handover between macrocell and femtocell. A frequent and unnecessary handover is another problem for hierarchical network environment that must be optimized to improve the performance of macrocell/femtocell integrated network. In this paper, firstly we propose the concentrator based and without concentrator based femtocell network architecture. Then we present the signal flow with appropriate parameters for the handover between 3GPP UMTS based macrocell and femtocell networks. A scheme for unnecessary handoff minimization is also presented in this paper. We simulate the proposed handover optimization scheme to validate the performance.