A user behavior based handover optimization algorithm for LTE networks

In Long Term Evolution networks, the handover used is a hard handover. Therefore, choosing the handover parameters is critical for the users´ satisfaction. Otherwise they will suffer from a high rate of radio link failures. Usually, there are two contradictory handover problems: radio link failures and unnecessary handovers (ping-pongs). Increasing some handover parameters (e.g. handover margin) leads to less ping-pongs, but higher radio link failure. This is not good for the network operators, as a high ping-pongs rate causes a large unnecessary overhead to the network. However, having a high radio link failure decreases the customers´ satisfaction, especially the customers using real time data. For the customers using non-real time data (e.g. web browsing and FTP download), the radio link failure problem will not severely affect their satisfaction. In this paper, a new algorithm is introduced to choose the most suitable values of the handover parameters, based on the user´s behavior. This is done by categorizing the users in the network into four categories. The categorization is done according to the users´ speeds and the data traffic used (real time traffic versus non-real time traffic). The handover parameters in each category are optimized independent from the other categories. The proposed algorithm shows a better performance for each category of users in terms of the most preferred metric for this category compared to dealing with all users as a single category.