Beam Level Mobility MGMT 08812724

Received August 4, 2019, accepted August 18, 2019, date of publication August 26, 2019, date of current version
September 6, 2019.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2937405
A Survey on Handover Management:

From LTE to NR
MUHAMMAD TAYYAB 1,3 , XAVIER GELABERT2 , AND RIKU JÄNTTI 3, (Senior Member, IEEE)
1 Huawei Technologies Finland Oy, 00180 Helsinki, Finland
2 Huawei Technologies Sweden AB, 164 94 Kista, Sweden
3 Department of Communications and Networking, School of Electrical Engineering, Aalto University, 00076 Espoo, Finland
Corresponding author: Muhammad Tayyab (muhammad.tayyab5@huawei.com)

This work was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program under
Grant H2020-MSCA-ITN-2016 SECRET-722424 [12].
ABSTRACT To satisfy the high data demands in future cellular networks, an ultra-densification approach is
introduced to shrink the coverage of base station (BS) and improve the frequency reuse. The gain in capacity
is expected but at the expense of increased interference, frequent handovers (HOs), increased HO failure
(HOF) rates, increased HO delays, increase in ping pong rate, high energy consumption, increased overheads
due to frequent HO, high packet losses and bad user experience mostly in high-speed user equipment (UE)
scenarios. This paper presents the general concepts of radio access mobility in cellular networks with possible
challenges and current research focus. In this article, we provide an overview of HO management in long-
term evolution (LTE) and 5G new radio (NR) to highlight the main differences in basic HO scenarios.
A detailed literature survey on radio access mobility in LTE, heterogeneous networks (HetNets) and
NR is provided. In addition, this paper suggests HO management challenges and enhancing techniques with
a discussion on the key points that need to be considered in formulating an efficient HO scheme.
INDEX TERMS Radio access mobility, cell selection, handover, LTE, 5G, NR, mobility enhancers.
I. INTRODUCTION it is equally important to provide reliable HO mechanisms as

There has been an exponential growth in mobile data usage this directly impacts on the perceived quality of experience
over the last 15 years (over 400 million fold) that is (QoE) for the end-user. When it comes to small cell studies,
expected to go up nearly 6-fold between 2017–2022 reaching the majority of works concentrate solely on capacity and
77 Exabyte per month by 2022 [1]. A key approach supported throughput analysis, with fewer devoted to HO management.
by 5G is ultra-cell-densification to satisfy the high data traffic But a true challenge remains which is reliable HO mech-
demands. The spectral efficiency of the 5G network may be anisms that provides high data-rates for moderate-to-high
largely improved by shrinking the coverage of base stations speed users in an urban environments.
(BSs), thus reducing the number of users served by each BS Low cost of the small BSs attract the operators to deploy
and improving the frequency reuse. However, a clear impact anywhere and turn them on and off in a coordinated manner
of densification planning is increased handover (HO) rate, to save energy. As a consequence of turning small cells on
i.e. the successive change of handling BS for a moving user. and off, the radio channel conditions change dramatically
Using this approach, the gain in capacity is achieved but at for the mobile users and so the neighboring cell list changes
the cost of increased HO rates and higher signaling overheads rapidly. This may also result in increased interference and
caused by HO procedure. The signaling overheads interrupt high energy consumption of the network, too frequent HOs,
the data flow and thus reduce the throughput of the users [2]. unnecessary HOs with Ping-Pong (PP) (back and forth HO)
Future cellular networks need to support data-hungry effect, HOF and increased delay. If a device undergoes multi-
applications with enhanced data rates possibly via cell densi- ple HO, the HO delay will be accumulate resulting in a severe
fication (small cells). In addition to providing high data rates, deterioration to the user experience [3].
The mobility mechanisms in cellular networks enable the
The associate editor coordinating the review of this article and approving users to move within the coverage area anywhere and still be
it for publication was Kai Yang. serviced. At large, we can differentiate radio access mobility
VOLUME 7, 2019 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. For more information, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 118907
M. Tayyab et al.: Survey on HO Management: From LTE to NR
into two separate procedures: cell (re-)selection and HO. Cell latency-optimized frame structure, high and low-frequency
(re-) selection happens when the UE is in IDLE_MODE, bands interworking, and ultra-lean transmissions. The scope
i.e. with no active transmission/reception, and needs to select of 5G is much wider than higher system capacity, high data
a suitable cell to camp on and thus be reachable when rates and better coverage. One example is the Internet of
incoming data is available (subsequently transitioning to Things (IoT) devices, where key challenges are low energy
active or CONNECTED_MODE). Cell reselection will be consumption, low device cost, handling large numbers of
triggered whenever a new camping cell is deemed better devices and extreme coverage. The second example is ultra-
than the current one. Differently from cell (re-)selection, reliable low-latency communication (URLLC) to target crit-
HO happens when the UE is in CONNECTED_MODE and ical industry applications. Despite these new and diverse
a better serving cell is deemed better than the current cell. communication paradigms, e.g. narrowband IoT (NB-IoT),
In this paper, the focus will be on the CONNECTED_MODE the HO management procedure specified by the 3rd genera-
mobility (i.e. HO) under diverse cell deployments for both tion partnership project (3GPP) remains unchanged. We can
LTE and NR. then foresee some required HO enhancements to cater for the
Pollini published the trends of HO design [4] and rec- unique features of NB-IoT and URLLC. 5G will also provide
ognized, already in 1996, that the demand for increased autonomous transportation, mission critical services, access
capacity, leading to smaller cell sizes, would involve an to remote health care, smarter agriculture and public warning
increased number of HOs. The first generation (1G) had a systems like Tsunami and earthquake warning messages with
cell size of tens of kilometers. The 1G HO procedure was the primary notification (short information) and secondary
tested in 1978 [5], consisting of a UE-assisted procedure fol- notification (detailed information) [10]. So, mobility man-
lowed by network decision making. In 2G networks, decreas- agement with forward compatibility is an important design
ing cell size increased the HO problems. To speed up the principle to enable smooth future optimizations. The first
HO process, distributed HO decision making was used [6], specification was limited to non-standalone NR operation,
which was costly in terms of signaling overheads during HO. meaning that NR will rely on LTE for initial access and
The PP problem was addressed by adding a hysteresis value in mobility. A standalone NR operation is the scope of the
the decision-making process. Soft HO algorithms were used 3GPP Release 15 that provides a new radio system comple-
in 3G code-division multiple access (CDMA) networks [7]. mented by a next-generation core network [11]. To meet the
Therein, a single frequency network allowed two BSs to 5G targets, mobility management will play an important role,
communicate with the user simultaneously, with some signal especially in successfully realizing small cell deployments,
combination at the receiver end. This soft HO, following the with its foreseen capacity boost while challenging radio
make-before-break idea, improves the link gains but increases dynamics; but also noting that the demand of mobile services
the interference to other users, eventually outweighing the on-the-move is increasing with the appearance of new mobil-
gains [8]. As for 4G and 5G technologies, the HO process ity paradigms such as self-driving vehicles, drones, and
went back to a break-before-make scheme, with a larger mobile small cells [12].
number of BSs than the previous network technologies. The
resulting small cells lead to small HO areas and no time for B. MOTIVATION FROM AN ENERGY SAVING
extensive HO signaling. These constraints demand simplified POINT OF VIEW
HO procedures for future ultra-dense networks. Telecommunication is responsible for 0.4 percent of world-
In order to meet high mobile data traffic, HetNets are wide CO2 emissions and the data volume is expected to
arguably the most promising solution with some notable increase ten times every five years that result up to 20 percent
challenges like inter-cell-interference-coordination (ICIC), increase in energy consumption. This directly impacts the
mobility management and backhaul provisioning. Out of environment through increased global warming. Analyzing
these issues, mobility management has special importance. the HO solution available in the literature to reduce the
In homogeneous deployments, UEs use the same set of HO number of HOs and make the HO process efficient is a
parameters (such as time to trigger (TTT) and hysteresis step forward to reduce energy consumption that has a direct
margin (HM)) throughout the network. However, using the impact on CO2 emissions and operational expenditure of the
same set of parameters in HetNets would degrade mobility operator [13].
performance as noted in [9]. When a user tries to connect
with an overloaded cell (i.e. may be at the same time the next C. MAIN OBJECTIVES AND SCOPE OF THIS PAPER
neighboring cell is less overloaded), it faces poor QoS and a This paper provides a survey on HO management in cellular
HOF occur due to the deficit in resources. Hence, adaptive networks, with special emphasis on LTE and NR deploy-
management of the cellular network is required to improve ments. Some general concepts of radio access mobility in
mobility performance. cellular networks are presented including, IDLE_MODE
vs CONNECTED_MODE mobility, HO types (e.g. Inter-/
A. 5G TARGETS AND THE IMPORTANCE OF MOBILITY Intra-frequency, Inter-/Intra-cell layer, Inter-/Intra-RAT and
To meet 5G targets, key technology components include mas- Inter-/Intra-operator HO), measurement and reporting, break
sive Multiple-Input and Multiple-Output (MIMO) antennas, before make vs make before break HO, and finally the
118908 VOLUME 7, 2019

HO performance metrics. All of these concepts are stud- Such UEs ‘‘wake-up’’ periodically to synchronize and check
ied briefly to highlight the challenges and current research the paging messages from the network. Upon reception of
focuses in these areas. In addition, an overview of HO man- a paging message, the UE establishes the connection with
agement in LTE and NR is presented to highlight the main the BS controlling the cell on which the UE is camped.
differences. A brief analysis of the HO techniques available Upon successful connection, involving a random access pro-
in the literature for the CONNECTED_MODE mobility is cedure, the UE transitions to a CONNECTED state [15].
shown to see the benefits and drawbacks of each scheme. Cell (re-) selection happens only when the UE is in
HO management challenges and enhancing techniques, key IDLE_MODE and needs to change for a more appropriate
points for formulating an efficient HO scheme (that could be cell in order to not compromise the successful reception of
considered for 5G NR) and future research directions are also future paging messages. Cell reselection is therefore a way
described. to change the current selected cell to camp on, to a better
This paper is organized as follows. Radio access mobility cell. The UE seeks to identify a suitable cell based on, so-
is discussed with general concepts in section II. A detailed called, IDLE_MODE measurements and cell selection crite-
overview of HO management in LTE and NR are presented ria. Suitable cells are those whose measured attribute meets
in section III and IV respectively. Challenges of HO manage- the SS/quality selection criteria (coined as s-criteria) for the
ment and ideas for radio access mobility enhancement with cell selection procedure. If a suitable cell is not available,
future research directions are described in section V. Finally, it will identify an acceptable cell. In this last case, the UE will
section VI concludes the paper. camp on an acceptable cell and will start the cell reselection
procedure. In addition, a UE in IDLE_MODE will strive for
II. RADIO ACCESS MOBILITY IN CELLULAR NETWORKS: reducing battery power consumption. This is achieved by a
SOME GENERAL CONCEPTS technique called Discontinuous Reception (DRX), whereby
In this section, we will provide the general concepts the terminal disconnects its receiver and enters a low power
behind the radio access mobility procedure in a cellular state. The terminal will periodically ‘‘wake-up’’ to receive
network. paging indications, with typical wake-up periods (so-called
In a UE-assisted-Network-Controlled HO, the UE will DRX cycles) of, typically, 0.32s, 0.64s, 1.28s and 2.56s in
generally perform some kind of signal strength (SS) or sig- LTE [16] (see section §22.5.1). The goal is to minimize inter-
nal quality measurement over a specific downlink reference ruption in paging reception during the cell reselection pro-
signal (RS) from the S-BS as well as the neighboring BSs. cedure. Noteworthy, and unlike in CONNECTED_MODE,
After processing the measurements, if a certain condition the UE can make the cell reselection decision on its own and it
is fulfilled (entry condition), a measurement report (MR) is is not required to report the measurements or events to the net-
transmitted to the S-BS. Once the MR is correctly received at work. When camped on a cell, the UE shall regularly search
the S-BS, the HO preparation phase between target BS (T-BS) for a better cell according to the cell reselection criteria. If a
and serving BS (S-BS) starts and a HO request is transmitted better cell is found, that cell is selected.
to the T-BS. Upon successful admission, a HO command At every DRX cycle, at least, the UE shall measure RSRP
(HOcmd) is transmitted from the S-BS to the UE. Once the and RSRQ levels to evaluate the so-called cell selection
HOcmd is successfully received, the HO execution phase criteria (s-criteria, in short) which is defined in [17] (see
starts, in which the UE accesses the target cell, by means section §5.2.3.2 therein). The UE shall filter the RSRP and
of cell synchronization and a random access procedure. RSRQ measurements of the serving cell using at least 2 mea-
A HO confirmation (HOconf) message is transmitted by the surements. Failure to fulfill the s-criteria means that the UE
UE once it is able to receive broadcast information from needs to identify the new serving cell. If the s-criteria is not
the T-BS. During the HO completion phase, the DL data path satisfied for a specific number of consecutive DRX cycles, the
is switched towards the target side by the user data gateway UE initiates measurements of all neighboring cells regardless
(UDGW) and, as a consequence, the T-BS starts receiv- of the measurement/priority criteria provided to the UE by the
ing packets from the UDGW. Finally, the T-BS transmits a network.
HO complete message to the S-BS to inform the success of In IDLE_MODE, a centralized entity (which for LTE is
the HO. After that, the S-BS releases any allocated resources the mobility management entity (MME)) has crude location
to that UE. information of the UE. This location is known per group of
cells denoted as a tracking area (TA). To prevent the frequent
A. IDLE_MODE VS CONNECTED_MODE MOBILITY registration during ping pong effect and reduce the signaling
In IDLE_MODE mobility, the UE is not engaged in an overheads of location management, a TA list (TAL) was
active data connection but still needs to be reachable via introduced in 3GPP Release 8. In this scheme, one UE can
signaling (paging) through an appropriate cell. Paging is a have a list of TAs instead of one TA per UE. The UE keeps the
way to broadcast a brief message over the entire service TAL until it moves to a cell that is not included in TAL [18].
area usually in a multicast fashion by many BSs at the Research efforts in this area are mainly devoted to provide
same time [14]. The UE monitors the paging channel for dynamic TAL configuration and to reduce the paging delays
incoming service requests and for cell (re-) selection process. for IDLE_MODE mobility.
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Differently from cell (re-)selection, HO happens when a The UE will then perform measurements over different down-
user is active on a data session or phone call while mov- link RSs, each of them originating from different neighboring
ing from one BS to another. The user changes its serving cells. It is usually the network which conveys the informa-
cell while it has an active connection. The HO procedure tion to the UE on which RS to measure at any given time.
seems to be a simple process of switching from one tower If a serving and target eNB operate on a different carrier
to another tower but in reality, it contains a set of processes frequency, they are called inter-frequency neighbors. In this
running beyond the radio access network as the UE moves case, the UE needs measurement gaps to perform the mea-
from one BS to another BS seamlessly. The UE measures surements on different frequencies [21]. A measurement gap
the SS from the serving and neighboring BSs. If the SS of indicates the time period when no DL/UL transmissions are
the neighboring cell becomes stronger than the serving cell, performed. The objective of this time gap is to enable UE to
a MR is sent to the serving BS to inform about the current switch its carrier frequency and perform measurements from
state of the UE. Because of the possible fluctuations in the the neighboring BSs when they operate on frequencies other
radio channel, the UE will not trigger the MR based on than that of the S-BS [15]. Intra-frequency measurements
the instantaneous radio channel measurement compared to are based on the ranking of the cells with the same car-
a threshold, but it will rather perform some local measure- rier frequency while inter-frequency measurements are based
ment processing to average-off those fluctuations and prevent on the ranking of the quality of other carrier frequencies.
from unnecessary HOs (e.g. ping pong effects). The UE will A UE must measure both Intra and Inter frequency in the
generally perform some kind of measurement averaging over order of priority indicated by the BS. The more the mea-
some measurement bandwidth, and it will implement a hys- surement frequencies, the greater is the UE battery power
teresis loop whereby the average measurement from the consumption, which poses a big challenge [15]. Another main
neighboring cell should be larger than a given offset during a challenge in future RATs is to reduce the measurement gaps
specified amount of time. In LTE, for example, both L1 and and thus improve the throughput for inter-frequency HO.
L3 filtering is implemented to introduce a certain level of
averaging. In addition, several offset values (cell-specific, 2) INTER-/INTRA-CELL LAYER HANDOVER
frequency-specific etc.) are introduced to determine entering HetNets provide a multiplicity of cellular layers (including
and leaving conditions for MR transmission. Furthermore, macro, micro and pico cell layers) aiming to fulfill the capac-
these conditions must be fulfilled during a specified amount ity requirement of the users in a cost-effective way. To provide
of time, which for LTE is the Time-To-Trigger (TTT) time. high capacity and fill the ‘‘coverage holes’’ of the macro
All these parameters ensure a steady SS of neighboring cell layer, small cells (micro or pico) are added to improve
cells before the UE sends the MR to the serving cell request- the network service quality and performance by offloading
ing HO. The cost of seamless connectivity comes from high the users from a large macro cell. Intra-frequency macro-
signaling overheads among the BSs and small cells [19]. macro/pico-pico cell HO is called Intra-layer HO and it is
So, mobility has a direct impact on the performance of the based on the received SS/signal quality from cells belonging
data session since the data transmission may be subject to to the same layer. To optimize the UE power consumption,
interruption due to the change of serving BS and high signal- periodic inter-frequency measurements are taken at specific
ing overheads, thus affecting throughput, latency, etc. Main measurement gaps. When the pico cell quality becomes better
research directions within CONNECTED_MODE mobility than a threshold, the UE offloads to the small cell layer, this
are looking into HO parameters optimization to improve being called a macro to pico/Inter-layer HO. Another reason
the HO process and reduce the radio link failures (RLFs), for HO to other layer is due to load balancing principles.
but sometimes this increases the power consumption of the If a UE is crossing two pico cells with an overlapping cov-
UEs located at the cell edge. These parameters avoid link erage region, an intra-frequency pico-pico HO occurs [22].
failures before HO thus engaging the serving BS for a long An Inter-layer HO can be both Intra- and Inter-frequency HO.
time that increases the power consumption. Recent research In Intra-frequency Inter-layer HO, the main challenge is the
is focused on an early initiation of HO that will help to interference as both macro and small cell are working on
improve the energy efficiency by switching OFF the serving the same carrier frequency while Inter-frequency Inter-layer
BS resources earlier [13]. Another interesting future research HO has high UE battery power consumption as it needs to
direction is to reduce the signaling overheads during HO in measure other frequencies [15].
order to improve the energy efficiency of the HO procedure. In HetNets, the main challenges and future research direc-
B. HANDOVER TYPES
tions are listed as follows. Firstly, as the coverage of pico cells
is small, Inter-layer HOs are more frequent than the Intra-
Different HO types, owing to the different involved domains,
layer HOs and this generates high ping-pong and signaling
are discussed in the following subsections, highlighting the
overheads which will in turn deteriorate the network QoS.
main challenges.
Secondly, energy efficient schemes such as power control
1) INTER-/INTRA-FREQUENCY HANDOVER and dynamic sleeping decrease the range of pico cells that
If a serving and target BS operates on the same carrier will affect cell selection decision and trigger more HOs.
frequency, we refer to them as intra-frequency neighbors. Lastly, during Inter-layer HetNet HO, the joint optimization
118910 VOLUME 7, 2019

of resource allocation, interference cancellation, power con- RSRP measurement falls below a threshold specified in the
trol and load balancing (that affects the HO decision) is a big s-criteria, the UE starts measuring the neighboring BSs. Dif-
challenge [23]. ferent values of s-criteria thresholds decide on how to perform
intra/inter-frequency measurements. To facilitate the mea-
3) INTER-/INTRA-RAT HANDOVER surements from the neighboring cells, the UE stops the DL
Horizontal HO occurs in the same radio access technol- data transmission for a duration specified by Measurement
ogy (RAT), and it is also called an intra-RAT HO. This Gap [15].
HO process happens between various cells of the same net- After processing the measurements, including filtering at
work mainly due to preserving the connectivity of the UE layers L1 and L3, if an entry condition is fulfilled, a MR is
with the network. On the other hand, the HO that occurs triggered to the S-BS. Specifically for LTE, the A3 event [20]
between different RATs is called a vertical or inter-RAT HO. is used as entry condition to assess if the filtered SS of the
It is the network that decides and instructs the UE to perform T-BS is better than that of the serving cell plus a hysteresis
an inter-RAT HO. In heterogeneous access networks, the need margin (called A3 offset). The entry condition has to be
for inter-RAT HO can be initiated as a special case of conve- maintained during a time defined by the TTT timer. In order
nience rather than connectivity (e.g., according to a particular to achieve a good compromise between HO reliability and
service choice of the user). Network switching automation HO frequency, HO optimization deals with the adjustment
and seamlessness are the main challenges with inter-RAT of the TTT, A3 offset, and the L3 filter coefficient K [26].
HO [24]. In the Inter-/Intra-RAT HO field, researchers are The measurements are performed with specific measurement
trying to improve the load balancing between RATs, among gaps and these are valid till identifying a better neighboring
others. BS according to the specified reporting criteria. In gen-
eral, three reporting criteria are used for HO-related
4) INTER-/INTRA-OPERATOR HANDOVER measurements:
Different operators provide an opportunity to the users to use • Event-triggered reporting: the UE reports the measure-
one or many types of systems and technologies. A HO that ment after a specified event has occurred.
occurs between technologies/networks and systems of the • Periodic reporting: the UE reports the measurements at
same operator is called intra-operator HO. On the contrary, specified time intervals.
inter-operator HO occurs between technologies/networks and • On-demand/blind reporting: the UE reports the measure-
systems that are not provided by the same operator [25]. ment immediately after it receives a request from the BS.
A good example of inter-operator HO is roaming, which An event is triggered when an entry condition is satis-
refers to the possibility for a user outside the range of its home fied. Such conditions are signaled by the BS in the form of
network to connect to another available network [14]. Device threshold, hysteresis and offset parameters. Blind redirection
equipment and SIM card functionalities instruct the UE to (or blind HO procedure) is used to support load balancing.
measure other operator reference signals and perform inter- In this case, the UE receives a HO command to detect and
operator HO when the UE is out of the range of its home access the target cell indicated in that command, without
network. Connectivity on the move to other countries is one having received a measurement report from the UE [20].
of the biggest benefits of inter-operator HO. The main chal-
lenge for the operators is to support other mobile operator’s D. BREAK-BEFORE-MAKE VS MAKE-BEFORE-BREAK
frequency bands, interfaces, protocols, network elements and Hard HO refers to the case when a UE is connected to only
roaming agreement for seamless roaming. Another roaming one BS at a time, which causes the connection with the
challenge is the different network standards and mobile data S-BS to be momentarily interrupted before a new connection
services among countries. Current research is attempting at is made towards the T-BS. This is sometimes referred also
improving the roaming quality through refined management as a break-before-make HO. On the contrary, a soft HO
to guarantee efficiency and thus increase the revenue. occurs when the UE is able to be simultaneously connected
to two BSs for a while, thus minimizing and practically
C. MEASUREMENTS AND REPORTING eliminating, any interruption time during the communication.
The UE is configured by the BS to perform the SS and/or This is sometimes referred to as a make-before-break (MBB)
signal quality measurements over a set of received RSs sent HO [24]. In LTE’s break-before-make HO, data interruption
by the S-BS and the neighboring BSs. The time-frequency of 40ms is experienced at each HO [27], which deteriorates
location of these signals and their design are known by both the user experience. Zero HO execution (HOE) time, low
the UE and the BS. As an example, in LTE, the Reference latency, high reliability, road vehicle safety, and efficiency
Signal Received Power (RSRP) is defined as the average are the use cases of CONNECTED_MODE mobility in NR.
received power without interference and noise components. HOE time can be reduced in NR by using the MBB strategy,
Also in LTE, the Reference Signal Received Quality (RSRQ) along with multi-cell connectivity and synchronized HO [27].
is defined as the ratio between the RSRP and the Received It has to be kept in mind however that, under NR at high
Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI), where RSSI is the total frequencies, the mm-wave signal can be blocked by building
received power including noise and interference. When the material, mortar, bricks, and the human body. So, an NR
VOLUME 7, 2019 118911

standalone architecture with traditional HO methods cannot

react quickly enough. A possible solution to this problem is
multi-connectivity [28]. The main goals for designing a mea-
surement and reporting scheme is the reduction of signaling
overheads and ping-pongs. However, multi-cell connectivity
increases the UE measurement and reporting complexities,
simultaneous utilization of resources in multiple cells and
power consumption. Research efforts are addressing concepts
that allow the UE to autonomously release and add various
radio links to reduce the signaling overheads [27].
FIGURE 1. HO process in 3GPP LTE.
E. HANDOVER PERFORMANCE METRICS
There are different performance metrics to measure the
HO performance including, HOF rates, HO delays, energy consumption, overheads, latencies, packet loss and
HO frequency, gain in average throughput, HOE time, HO interruption time. Also, it should maximize the gain in
PP rate, energy consumption, signaling overheads due to average throughput and HO success rate along with the use
frequent HO, HO success rate, data latencies, packet loss and of adaptive TTT, A3 offset and HM values (depending upon
HO interruption time. A brief definition of these performance different mobility scenarios).
metrics is provided next:
• HOF rate: HO failures may occur at different stages III. HANDOVER MANAGEMENT IN LTE
during the HO process. These may include failures at This section describes the LTE HO with a brief introduction
the radio link due to poor radio conditions in both the of key features and the entities involved in LTE mobility.
uplink and downlink, failure to convey particular mes- A step by step HO procedure is provided with a detailed
sages after a given number of retransmission attempts, literature survey.
synchronization failures, failures during random access
procedures and others. The HOF rate is the total number A. KEY FEATURES OF LTE HANDOVER MANAGEMENT
of HOFs divided by the sum of the total number of HOFs The HO process in 3GPP LTE can be succinctly described
and the total number of successful HOs [29]. in four steps for CONNECTED_MODE mobility as shown
• HO frequency (or HO rate): is the number of HOs by Fig. 1 [30],
per second. HO frequency usually increases by increas- 1. The serving and neighbor eNBs transmit DL RS.
ing the UE speed and decreasing cell size. In LTE, 2. The UE performs and processes SS measurements.
lowering parameters such as the TTT and A3 offset, 3. The UE sends the measurement report (MR) to the
favors HO to be triggered earlier at the cost of an overall serving eNB.
increased number of HOs. So, there is a tradeoff between 4. Based on the received MR, the serving eNB makes the
reducing the HO frequency and HOFs [29]. HO decision and sends a HO request to the target eNB.
• PP rate: is the number of ping pong events during a given The entities and interfaces involved in LTE mobility are the
period of time. A ping pong event is the occurrence of a following as shown in the network architecture provided
HO between a S-BS and a T-BS, followed by another in Fig. 2:
HO to the original S-BS, all this happening under a • eNB: The eNB handles some aspects of user mobility
predefined, and generally short, time [26]. in a CONNECTED state. For example, receiving the
• HO Energy consumption: is the amount of energy con- MR sent by the UE, deciding whether a HO is needed,
sumed during a HO procedure [13]. requesting the target eNB for admission control, and
• HO success rate: is the total number of successful HOs others.
divided by the total number of triggered HOs [29]. • Mobility Management Entity (MME): Handles
A HO process is successful if it is completed before the mobility management during session establishment,
measured SS from the S-BS drops below the minimum IDLE_MODE, setting up of bearers and security pro-
acceptable SS level [15]. cedures. It is the controlling node in the core network.
• Data Latency: a period between the reception (or trans- • Serving Gateway (SGW): The SGW is in charge to
mission) of the last data packet from the S-BS and set up a user plane and act as a local anchor for
the first packet through the T-BS is called the data CONNECTED_MODE user mobility. It forwards the
latency [30]. user data to the UE through the eNB.
• HO interruption time: is a time period during a HO • Packet Data Network Gateway (PGW): It is respon-
procedure when the UE cannot exchange user plane sible for connection from LTE to external network and
packets with any of the BS [31]. allocation of IP address to the UE.
The optimum HO procedure should try to minimize the • S1: The S1 is an interface between the RAN and the
HOF rate, HO delay, HO frequency, HOE time, PP rate, LTE core network side. The S1-U interface carries user
118912 VOLUME 7, 2019

• Inter-eNB HO with MME Change: In this case,

the HO involves a change of MME via signaling mes-
sages through the S10 interface between the source and
target MMEs. Only the S1 interface (not X2) will be
used in this case. In addition, the SGW may (intra-
SGW) or may not (inter-SGW) be relocated, as deter-
mined by the implemented physical deployment, see
Fig. 2 (e) and see Fig. 2 (d) respectively.
In general, the S1 HO procedure is more complex than
the X2 HO because the MME has to act as an intermedi-
ary message relay and coordinate between the source and
target eNBs. The HO process in X2 and S1 is completed alike
but the user will face a longer data interruption in the S1 case.
As an example, a more detailed description of the
intra-MME/Serving Gateway (SG) HO procedure is shown
in Fig. 3 and described hereafter [21]. The HO procedure
is divided into three phases: the HOP phase (steps 0–6),
the HOE phase (steps 7–11) and the HO completion phase
(steps 12–18):
• Step 1: The UE measurement procedure is configured
by the serving eNB according to access restriction and
roaming information.
• Step 2: The UE sends a MR to the serving eNB.
• Step 3: Based on the MR, the serving eNB makes a
HO decision.
• Step 4: The serving eNB sends a HO request message
(containing the necessary information to prepare the HO
FIGURE 2. LTE mobility architecture along with relevant interfaces and
at the target side) to the target eNB.
HO use cases. • Step 5: The target eNB performs admission control
to find out if enough resources can be granted by the
target eNB.
data between eNB and SGW, and the S1-MME interface • Step 6: The target eNB sends the HO request acknowl-
carries control signaling messages between the eNB and edgement to the serving eNB. As soon as it is received,
the MME. The S1 can carry HO signaling and HO prepa- data forwarding between source and target eNBs may
ration (HOP) messages between two eNBs as shown start.
in Fig. 2. In such a case, the HO is called S1-based HO. • Step 7: The target eNB generates the RRC message and
• X2: The X2 provides an interface between two eNBs transmits it to the UE with the necessary information to
which carries control information messages. During an perform the HO.
X2-based HO, the X2 interface carries HO signaling and • Step 8: The serving eNB sends the SN (Sequence Num-
HOP messages between the source and target eNBs. ber) Status Transfer message to the target eNB in order
With the above architecture in mind, the following to keep track of packet ordering.
HO types in LTE can be defined: • Step 9: The UE detaches from the old cell and synchro-
• Intra-eNB HO: When both the source and target cells nizes with the target cell (new cell).
belong to the same eNB, see Fig. 2 (a). • Step 10: After successfully completing the random
• Inter-eNB HO: When both the source cell and tar- access channel (RACH) procedure, the target eNB
get cell belong to different eNBs. In this particular responds with uplink (UL) allocation and timing
case, we assume that the MME will not change as a advance (TA) information for the UE.
consequence of the HO (i.e. intra-MME). In addition, • Step 11: After UE successfully accesses the target cell,
the SGW may (intra-SGW) or may not (inter-SGW) be the UE sends the RRC connection reconfiguration com-
relocated, as determined by the implemented physical plete message along with an uplink buffer status report to
deployment, see Fig. 2 (c) and see Fig. 2 (b) respectively. the target eNB which indicates that the HO procedure is
This inter-eNB HO is either supported by the X2 inter- completed for the UE. Then the target eNB starts sending
face or, in its absence, by the S1 interface. We then refer data to the UE.
to X2 HO and S1 HO respectively. Specification for both • Step 12: The target eNB informs the MME that the
interfaces and their functionalities can be found in [32] UE has changed cell and that the DL path from
and [33], along with references therein. the SGW should be changed.
VOLUME 7, 2019 118913

TABLE 1. Some examples of HO failure types [26].
In the next subsections, we will provide the main causes of

HO failures and how we can evaluate the RLF.
1) HANDOVER FAILURES
In general, HO failures can be categorized as a result of
‘‘wrong’’ HO decisions, which can be described as:
• Too early HO: After successful HO, UE connects back
to the serving cell (result in high PP rate).
• Too late HO: When serving cell channel quality drops
too low before HO to the target cell is completed.
• HO to a wrong cell: UE disconnects from the target cell
and connects to a new cell.
Examples of different HO failure types are described
in Table 1, [26], where T310 is a timer which starts upon
indications of problems in the radio link, and timer T304 is
used as a safeguard for the HO execution phase, and starts
after the HO command is received (see step 7 in Fig. 3). At the
expiry of timer T304, it initiates the RRC connection re-
establishment procedure otherwise it stops at the successful
completion of HO.
FIGURE 3. Intra-MME/Intra-SGW HO procedure, based on [21].
Radio Link Failure:
In RRC_CONNECTED state, radio link monitoring
enables the UE to determine whether it is in-sync or out-
• Step 13: The MME sends a modify bearer request mes- of-sync with respect to its serving cell. On getting a con-
sage to the SGW. secutive number of out-of-sync indications, UE stats a RLF
• Step 14: The DL data path is switched to the target side timer ‘T310’ as shown in Fig. 4. Both in-sync and out-
by the SGW. of-sync (N311 and N310) counters are configured by the
• Step 15: Then SGW sends a modify bearer response network. The T310 timer will be stopped when a number of
message to the MME. consecutive in-sync (N311) indications are reported (case 2
• Step 16: The MME acknowledges the path switch in Fig. 4). If T310 expires, a RLF is declared and the UE
request. turns off its transmission to avoid interfering with other UEs
• Step 17: The target eNB informs the success of HO to and subsequently tries to re-establish a connection within a
the serving eNB and triggers the release of resources measured delay called UE connection re-establishment delay
used by the source eNB by sending a UE context release (case 1 in Fig. 4). The delay when UE detects the need for
message. RRC-connection Re-establishment until it transmits a ran-
• Step 18: The serving eNB release radio resources asso- dom access signal to the target cell is called RRC connection
ciated with the UE. re-establishment delay. In-sync threshold Qin corresponds
118914 VOLUME 7, 2019

proposed in [36] to reduce the RLF and PPs and achieve high
energy efficiencies, at the cost of keeping the other perfor-
mance parameters within acceptable limits. A fuzzy multiple
criteria cell selection scheme was proposed in [37] that con-
sider UE UL conditions, resource block utilization in addi-
tion to s-criteria of LTE conventional cell selection method.
This technique provides a highly reliable cell selection with
reduced HO PPs and failures that lead to high throughput.
A HO detection with self-organizing HO parameters algo-
rithm was proposed in [38] that was based on reinforcement
learning concept. The algorithm improves the user mobility
performance by reducing call drops, PPs and HOFs.
The works in [23], [30], [39] are devoted to reducing
the HOR. A distance-based HO scheme for macro and femto
cells was proposed in [23] to minimize the HOFs and unnec-
essary HOs. A reactive HO technique was proposed in [30] to
FIGURE 4. RLF detection [16]. postpone the HO process until UE lose its serving cell or the
most probable location of a UE arrives. This method reduced
the HO overheads, HO rate, and latencies. Using user mobil-
to 2% Block Error Rate (BLER) and out-of-sync Qout cor- ity information, time the user stays in femto cell was calcu-
responds to 10% BLER [16] (see section §22.7.1). With no lated in [39]. HO from macro to femto cell was proposed only
DRX configuration, when the DL radio link quality in 200ms when the available data volume of femto is larger than the
period becomes worse than Qout , an out-of-sync occurs. If the macro cell and the time user stay in femto cell is greater than
DL radio link quality in 100ms period becomes better than a certain threshold.
the Qin , an in-sync occurs [16] (see section §22.7.2). These The works in [23], [40], [41] are dedicated to reducing
occurrences are reported by the UE to the physical layer the HOFs. Based on radio link conditions of a UE, two
and the higher layers which may apply L3 filtering for eval- different HO schemes were proposed in [40]. For poor radio
uation of the RLF. With DRX configuration, in-sync and link conditions, radio link proactive HO was proposed. Using
out-of-sync evaluation periods are extended matching the this method, HO can be completed before RLF by lower-
DRX length [16]. ing the TTT and A3 offset values. For UEs in good radio
link conditions, HO was divided into two parts, early HO
B. LITERATURE SURVEY preparation (EHOP) and HOE. EHOP reduces the HOF rates
In this section, we identify and categorize the proposed LTE and HOE was triggered only when HO is needed, to avoid
HO techniques found in the literature, for both single-layer the PPs. An adaptive beamforming scheme for LTE with
and multi-layer (HetNets) LTE networks. dynamic adjustment of the HO HM was proposed in [41]
When addressing HO in LTE, existing works are usu- to improve the HO performance of the high-speed railways.
ally divided into targeting the reduction of RLF [34], Beamforming with various gain factors was used to improve
reduction of ping-pongs (PPs) [35], or a combination of the received signal quality in the overlapping region. The
both [36]–[38], reduction of HO rate [23], [30], [39], and proposed scheme effectively improves the HO trigger and
reduction of HOFs [23], [40], [41]. Other works are devoted HO success probabilities.
to finding the signaling overheads and the power consump- The work in [42] is dedicated to finding the signaling over-
tion during HO [42], assess the energy-saving [13], [36], load heads and power consumption that results from the transmis-
balancing [43], the impact of inter-site distance (ISD) [26], sion of HO related signaling during the HO procedure. The
[44], and UE speed [26] on the HO process. results depict that MR transmission is the main contributor
RLF is one of the main causes for HOF. The details of to air-interface signaling overheads. A simplified power con-
the RLF are presented in section §III. A. 1. A distributed sumption model (for both UE and eNB) is also presented that
mobility robustness optimization algorithm was proposed finds RACH transmission as the highest power consuming
in [34] to minimize HOFs due to RLFs by adjusting TTT part out of the UE signaling message transmission.
and offset parameters. The algorithm classifies too early, To make the HO process energy efficient, the works
too late and wrong cell HOF categories and optimize the in [13], [36] are devoted to reducing energy consumption that
HO parameters according to the dominant failure. To reduce has a direct impact on CO2 emissions and operational expen-
the PPs, an orientation matching based fast HO approach for diture of the operator. A reduced early HO with bandwidth
LTE advance was proposed in [35] to choose the target eNB expansion scheme was proposed in [13] to enhance energy
based on orientation match, received SS and current load. saving. The proposed scheme initiate HO early and turned off
The techniques to reduce both, the RLFs and PPs are freed resource blocks when compared to conventional LTE at
presented in [36]–[38]. A reduced early HO scheme was the cost of increased RLFs up to 5 percent. While a reduced
VOLUME 7, 2019 118915

early HO scheme was proposed in [36] to provide high energy A fuzzy-logic based scheme is proposed in [46] for a
efficiencies and thus reduce the operational expenses of a dense small cell deployment to jointly reduce the HOR,
mobile operator. HOFs and PPs. The radio channel quality and user speed
When a user tries to connect with an overloaded cell, are used to choose a hysteresis margin for HO decision in
it faces poor QoS and HOF due to a deficit in resources. At the a self-optimization manner. The results show that the pro-
same time, may be the neighbor cell resources remained posed scheme has superior HO performance than the existing
unused. Hence, adaptive HO management of the cellular solutions.
network is required through load balancing. The work in [43] The energy-saving techniques for LTE HetNets are pro-
is dedicated to improving load balancing. Moving distance posed in [29], [47], [48]. HO procedure with the suitability of
of a UE was calculated using a change of RSS. The HO macro cell power off was proposed in [29]. It was found that
was triggered only by comparing the moving distance with macro cell power off procedure is suitable only for low-speed
a threshold. The proposed technique shifts the load released users and high small cell densities. One valuable approach
from a heavily loaded cell to the nearest neighboring cells. to improve energy efficiency is to minimize the unnecessary
The impact of ISD on the HO process is presented HOs in overlapping areas of the cells without compromis-
in [26], [44] and the impact of UE speed in [26]. In [26], it is ing the QoS of the mobile terminal [47]. The author for-
found that certain cell size can be found around which any mulated the HO problem as a constrained Markov decision
increase or decrease of cell size brings the performance degra- process and proposed the HO only if the expected energy
dation. For large cell sizes, low-speed UE HOFs may increase saving amount through the HO is greater than the energy
due to the inability to escape from poor radio condition areas. loss at BS during the HOE phase to avoid frequent HOs.
It is also investigated that high-speed UEs degrade the perfor- The main idea was to consider HO energy consump-
mance, especially for small cell sizes. In [44], the impact of tion under the expectation on stochastic behaviors of the
ISD on HO success rate in an LTE network was discussed. HO parameter to make a HO decision, which results in a
It is found that by increasing the ISD, we should decrease reduction of frequent HOs occurring within the areas cov-
the TTT, A3 offset and HM values. ered by many BSs. Another energy-centric HO decision
When addressing HO in LTE HetNets, existing works are algorithm that minimizes the power consumption at the
usually divided in targeting the HOR reduction [45], joint UE side in an integrated LTE macro-femto network was pro-
reduction of PPs and HOFs [9], joint reduction of HOR, posed in [48]. It suitably adopts the HO HM that reduce the
HOFs and PPs [46], and reduction of HO signaling [19]. power consumption and interference at the cost of increased
Other works are devoted to assess the energy saving [29], HOE events.
[47], [48], load balancing [49], [50], improving user capac- The load balancing techniques are proposed in [49], [50].
ity or QoE [51]–[56], and user Mobility State Estimation The load balancing algorithm proposed in [49] was for small-
(MSE) (for example, categorizing into low, medium or high cell, macro-cell, and HetNets. The algorithm limits the load
speed cases) for HO decision [57], [58]. released from a heavily loaded cell to the nearest neighboring
An SINR-based HOR analysis is presented in [45] that cells. A centralized Self-Organizing Network (SON) was
considers the impact of SINR on HO because of the strong introduced to continuously estimates the load status of the
interference caused by the dense small cell deployment. cells and decide a HO for a user to provide load balancing and
SINR effect at the user locations before and after it moves avoid performance oscillations. A resource block utilization
are used to find the interference and correlated association ratio was defined to measure the cell load and a threshold was
regions in various time slots. On this basis, the mathematical also introduced to determine the overloaded cells. To reduce
expressions of SINR-based vertical and horizontal HO rate PPs of the load between the cells, moving the load impact
are derived under maximum average received power strategy. on the neighboring cell was also considered. Another Het-
The results show that SINR-based HO has a HOR which is Net model with randomized Radio Resource Management
‘‘gap’’ lower than the SINR-free case. This gap indicates the (RRM) in femto cells and a proactive macro to femto offload-
effect of interference on the HO procedure. ing scheme (to improve data rates in the congested networks)
Release 10 idea of range expansion was used in [9] to was proposed in [50]. A hybrid access control approach at
improve the signal to interference and noise ratio (SINR) for femto cells was also proposed to allow up to 20 times higher
HO completion purpose and increase pico cell DL coverage. data rates for the femto BSs authorized users, compared to
But poor PP performance was observed. Then mobility based non-authorized users in the network. The femto tire operating
ICIC (MB-ICIC) was proposed for HetNets which combines resources were determined by random fragment allocation
HO parameter optimization along with enhanced ICIC to and simple spectrum fragmentation. To implement an intel-
reduce PPs and HOF rates. For low-speed UEs, large TTT was ligent RRM, the fragment size was dynamically adjusted
proposed to reduce PPs. A Control/Data Separation Archi- according to the congestion of the network. It is beneficial
tecture (CDSA) in ultra-dense HetNets was proposed in [19] for the operators to guarantee a minimum average data rate
with several analytical models to achieve promising gains for the authorized users and introduced new services to pro-
in term of HO performance and reduce the HO signaling mote the usage of femto cells especially in indoor scenarios
overheads when compared to conventional networks. such as offices and homes.
118916 VOLUME 7, 2019

A context-aware Markov-based HO model is reported NR supports multiple subcarrier spacings (called numerolo-
in [51] to improve the user capacity. In this work, the per- gies) ranging from 15kHz up to 240kHz, with some limita-
formance of the mobile user in a HetNet scenario has been tions on the supported bandwidths, these ranging between
characterized as a function of the neighboring cell power 5MHz and 400MHz. NR allows bandwidth adaptation to
profile, user mobility, traffic load and HO related parameters. reduce the device energy consumption because not all the
In [52], a machine learning based HO management scheme devices need to use the same bandwidth. The frame structure
is presented to improve the QoE of the user. The scheme of NR includes a 10ms radio frame which is divided into
learns from the past experiences considering how the QoE ten 1ms subframes. Then, a subframe is further divided
of the user is affected when HO is completed to a certain into slots and each slot consist of 14 OFDM symbols. The
eNB. To predict the most appropriate cell for HO, a neural length of the slot depends on the aforementioned numerology
network-based supervised learning is used. Another algo- configuration.
rithm to improve the QoE of the user was proposed in [53] NR support Frequency Division Duplex (FDD), Time
that uses the QoS metrics to obtain a utility function for each Division Duplex (TDD) and a new duplex scheme called
macro and famto cell. The resulting utility determines the dynamic TDD. Dynamic TDD is a key technology in NR
HO necessity. An analytical model for the cross-tier HO in whereby symbols within a slot can be dynamically allocated
HetNets is proposed in [54] to improve the QoE of the user by to either DL or UL as part of some scheduler decision.
reducing the HOR, HOFs and PP rate. Closed-form expres- Another key feature of NR is the massive number of
sions for HO performance metrics are obtained as a function steerable antenna elements (more than 64, for beam steering
of TTT, BS density and user mobility that can provide guid- purpose) for both reception and transmission. The beam steer-
ance to deploy HetNets. A frequent HO mitigation algorithm ing technique avoids interference and provides the targeted
is proposed in [55] to improve the QoE of the user especially coverage for NR.
by reducing the HORs and improving the throughput. Based In NR, the main challenge is the limited network coverage
on the proposed algorithm, frequent HO experience users are due to higher radio channel attenuation. The difficulty of pro-
categorized as either PP or fast-moving user. The PP users are viding full coverage at higher frequencies is eliminated using
managed by adjusting HO related parameters and the fast- interworking with the system operating at lower frequencies.
moving users are handed to the macro cells. The impact of The DL data rates are achieved using wider bandwidth at
fading and shadowing on the HO performance is analyzed higher frequencies while the UL data rates are achieved on
in [56]. Therein, an analytical model is used to analyze PP the lower frequency spectrum (because UL is power limited).
rate and HOFs under varying channel conditions for HetNets Although lower frequencies have fewer bandwidths, the UL
with vehicular users. The results show that the fading can data rates are still achieved due to low channel attenuation.
significantly degrade the HO performance. Next section describes the NR HO with a brief introduction
A user MSE for HO decision are presented in [57], [58]. of key features and the entities involved in NR mobility. Also,
UE reselection count threshold and fading frequency thresh- a step by step HO procedure is provided with a detailed
old was defined to specify low, medium and high mobility literature survey.
state of a user in [57]. This method was very attractive as
UE already measure the Doppler frequencies for channel A. KEY FEATURES OF HANDOVER MANAGEMENT IN NR
estimation purpose. Another user mobility pattern bases HO A key challenge in NR is providing mobility robustness and
decision-making approach for HetNets was proposed in [58] minimizing service interruption. Due to shrinking the cell
to improve the user performance and provide the user prefer- size, NR introduces three big challenges. First is the frequent
ences. This approach performed better than the conventional HO resulting in increased HOF rate; second is the increased
vertical HO algorithms. number of intra/inter-frequency measurements which reduces
the battery life of the mobile user; and, third is the increased
IV. HANDOVER MANAGEMENT IN NR overheads due to frequent HO at microwave/mm-wave fre-
Some of the key features of NR include [11]: high-frequency quencies which may limit the frequency resources for static
operation, spectrum flexibility, forward compatibility, and users.
Ultra-Lean design. NR operates between 1 GHz to 52.6 GHz A NG Radio Access Network (NG-RAN) node is either
in both licensed and unlicensed spectrum. Forward compat- a gNB which provides NR user plane and control plane
ibility ensures enabling new services and introducing new protocol terminations towards the UE or an ng-eNB which
technologies in the radio interface design in the future. The provide E-UTRAN user plane and control plane protocol
ultra-lean design principle aims to minimize the always-on terminations towards the UE [59]. Overall architecture of
transmissions (like broadcasting of system information, sig- NR is shown in Fig. 5, where Xn interface interconnects the
nals for BS detection and always-on RSs for channel estima- gNBs and ng-eNBs while NG interface connects gNBs and
tion), to achieve high data rates and high energy performance ng-eNBs to the NR core network. More specifically, NG-
of the network. C interface connects gNBs and ng-eNBs to the Access and
The transmission scheme in NR is the same as LTE, Mobility Management Function (AMF) and NG-U interface
Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex (OFDM). to the User Plane Function (UPF).
VOLUME 7, 2019 118917

a consequence of the HO (i.e. intra-AMF). In addition,

the UPF may (intra-UPF) or may not (inter-UPF) be
relocated, as determined by the implemented physical
deployment, see Fig. 6 (c) and see Fig. 6 (b) respectively.
• Inter-gNB HO with AMF Change: In this case, the
HO involves a change of AMF via signaling messages
through the NG14 interface between the source and
target AMFs. Only the NG interface (not Xn) will be
used in this case. In addition, the UPF may (intra-
UPF) or may not (inter-UPF) be relocated, as determined
by the implemented physical deployment, see Fig. 6 (e)
and see Fig. 6 (d) respectively.
Multi-RAT dual connectivity (DC) operation is supported
in NG-RAN while a UE is in RRC-CONNECTED mode.
FIGURE 5. Overall Architecture of NR (adapted from [59]).
DC operation allows the UE to connect with two gNBs simul-
taneously (the serving and the target gNBs) and thus reduce
the HO interruption time to 0ms.
NR introduced a UE third state called INACTIVE and this
falls between IDLE and CONNECTED state of LTE. The
purpose of this state is to reduce the time to bring the UE in the
CONNECTED state while reducing the signaling overheads
and improving the UE battery life. A UE in this state can go
to the CONNECTED state without the involvement of Non-
Access Stratum (NAS) signaling as both the UE and the gNB
store AS context in this state. In the RRC_CONNECTED
mode, network-controlled mobility applies to UEs being cat-
egorized into two types of mobility: beam level mobility
and cell level mobility [59]. In the presence of beamforming
feature with multiple antennas, beam level mobility handles
the procedures that ensure good alignment between transmit-
ting and receiving antenna beams. Beam level mobility can
only be performed based on the Channel State Information
Reference Signal (CSI-RS). It deals with at the lower layers
using physical layer and Medium Access Control (MAC)
layer control signaling. It does not require explicit RRC
signaling to be triggered. Also, RRC is not required to know
which beam is being used at a given point in time. On the
other hand, cell level mobility requires explicit RRC sig-
naling to be triggered (i.e. intra/inter-gNB HO). During the
HO procedure, data forwarding, duplication avoidance and
in-sequence delivery is ensured. As with LTE, NR support
timer-based HOFs and to recover from a HOF, an RRC
connection reestablishment procedure is also used.
FIGURE 6. NR mobility architecture along with relevant interfaces and HO The basic HO procedure in NR (which is similar to
use cases. LTE HO procedure) is shown in Fig. 7 [59], containing
HOP (0-5), HOE (6-8) and HO completion (9-12) phases:
Fig. 6 shows the NR mobility architecture along with rele- • Step 1: The UE measurement procedure is configured
vant interfaces (as specified in 3GPP TS 23.501 [60]) and HO by the serving gNB according to access restriction and
use cases. With the Fig. 6 architecture in mind, the following roaming information and the UE sends a MR to the
HO types in NR can be defined: serving gNB.
• Intra-gNB HO: When both the source and target cells • Step 2: Based on the MR and RRM information,
belong to the same gNB, see Fig. 6 (a). the serving gNB makes a HO decision.
• Inter-gNB HO: When both the source cell and tar- • Step 3: The serving gNB sends a HO REQUEST mes-
get cell belong to different gNBs. In this particular sage (containing the necessary information to prepare
case, we assume that the AMF will not change as the HO at the target side) to the target gNB.
118918 VOLUME 7, 2019

FIGURE 8. NR measurement model [59].
• Step 10: The DL data path switch towards the target side
by NR core.
• Step 11: The AMF acknowledges the Path Switch
Request.
• Step 12: The target gNB informs the success of HO to
the serving gNB and triggers the release of resources
by the serving gNB by sending a UE Context Release
message. Finally, the serving gNB release the radio
resources associated with the UE.
The UE measures multiple beams of a cell in RRC_ CON-
NECTED mode and, to derive the cell quality, the mea-
surements results (power values) are averaged. The UE is
configured to consider a subset of N best-detected beams
above a certain threshold. To derive the beam quality, filtering
takes place at the physical layer. To derive the cell quality
from multiple beams, the second phase of filtering takes place
at the RRC level [59]. Cell quality is derived in the same
way for the serving cell(s) and for the non-serving cell(s).
The gNB may configure the UE to include measurements for
the X ‘‘best’’ beams in the MR. In order to provide better
user-centric (beam level) mobility experience, UE specific
CSI-RS can be configured. For example, to achieve better
measurement accuracy with improved SINR, narrow beam
FIGURE 7. Intra-AMF/UPF HO in NR [59]. CSI-RS can be configured for the cell-edge users in high-
frequency scenario.
A brief NR measurement model is shown in Fig. 8 [59]
• Step 4: If the resources can be granted by the target gNB, where k beam specific samples are filtered at L1 and reported
the target gNB performs Admission Control procedure. to L1 and L3. The beam consolidation block derives the cell
• Step 5: The target gNB sends a HO Request Acknowl- quality and reports it to L3 for filtering. The evaluation of
edgement to the serving gNB. As soon as the serving reporting criteria block checks whether measurement report-
gNB receives the HO Request Acknowledgement mes- ing information is necessary to send on the radio interface
sage, data forwarding may be initiated. based on different measurements illustrated by A and A1 .
• Step 6: Serving gNB sends a HO command to the UE. In the second stage, for the non-serving cells, L3 filtering is
• Step 7: Serving gNB sends the SN Status Transfer mes- performed and X measurements are selected out of k to send
sage to the target gNB. on the radio interface as a measurement report.
• Step 8: UE detach from the old cell and synchronize Using Supplementary UL (SUL) [61], the UE can be
with the target cell. configured with two UL bands for one DL band of the
• Step 9: The target gNB informs AMF that UE has same cell as shown in Fig. 9. Usually, the cell coverage in
changed the cell, through the Path Switch Request UL direction is lower because UE transmit power is less
message. than the gNB. The idea is to use a low-frequency secondary
VOLUME 7, 2019 118919

proposed in [1] including, location-aware, cell size aware and

hybrid HO skipping. It was assumed that the serving area
of each eNB is known. An anchor-based multi-connectivity
architecture with HO probabilities expression was proposed
in [63] to reduce the HO cost. Through multi-connectivity,
the best access point is chosen as a HO anchor to pro-
vide control plane and thus reduce the HO rate. In [64],
the author proposed mobility-aware user association strat-
egy for the mmWave 5G network with attractive features
including, after mobility channel condition tracking, load
balancing and stopping the recurrent HOs. An algorithm
is proposed in [65] to minimize the unnecessary HOs for
HetNets with dense small cell deployment. The distance
between the UE and the small cell along with the angle of
movement of the UE is used to construct a short candidate
list that helps to reduce the unnecessary HOs and signaling
FIGURE 9. SUL example [59]. overheads.
The works in [66]–[68] are focused to reduce both the HOR
and HOFs for URLLC. In [66], the authors use mmWave
UL band in addition to the original higher UL frequency links for data transmission and µWave links for handling
band, for the cell-edge users to increase the cell coverage paging and control information. Using this technique, large
and thus overcome adverse channel conditions. Therefore, the data can be cached via high-speed mmWave links. The mobile
SUL concept can be utilized to reduce the HO failure types user can mute a HO towards a small cell and only main-
due to UL transmission errors (for example F0, F5 and F7 tain macro-cell connection for communicating control signal.
in Table 1). This technique reduces the HOFs by avoiding unnecessary
HO towards small cells. A similar procedure is introduced
B. LITERATURE SURVEY in [67] for 5G HetNets that decouple user and control plane
When addressing the HO in 5G, existing works are usually to reduce the HO frequency. The work in [68] targets at low
divided in targeting the reduction of HOFs [3], [31], [62], HOR with zero HOFs that is achieved using LTE-NR DC
reduction of HO rate [1], [63], [64], [65], or a combination of (i.e. Dual Connectivity) feature with signaling and data radio
both [66]–[70], improving throughput or QoE of the user [1], bearers duplication. The work in [69] maintains the HOFs
[31], [71]–[77] and reduction of HO signaling [78], [79]. to an operator-predefined acceptable level and reduces the
Other works are devoted to assess the energy saving [62], [80] unnecessary HOs for small cells based HetNets. A trade-
and load balancing [62], [64]. off between HOFs and unnecessary HOs is found using a
The works in [3], [31], [62] are devoted to reduce time metric and estimated time-of-stay of the user is used
the HOFs. A Markov chain based HO management strategy to avoid long neighbor list. A grey rational analysis (GRA)
was proposed in [3]. This technique chooses and assigns the based algorithm is proposed in [70] to reduce both the HORs
optimal next eNB to OpenFlow tables of the mobile node and the HOFs in dense small cell HetNets. The GRA method
virtually (before the actual connection) considering transi- is used to rank the best available target cells for HO and an
tion and available resource probability estimation. Compared analytical hierarchy process is utilized to obtain the weight
to the conventional LTE approach, HOFs and delays were of HO metrics. These weight are further utilized to reduce
reduced to 21 and 52 percent respectively. Estimating the the link failures and frequent HOs.
mobility state (low, medium and high speed) of a 5G user The works in [31], [71]–[77] are targeted at maximiz-
for scaling TTT was proposed in [31] to reduce the HO ing the throughput during the HO process. In [71], [72],
interruption time, HOFs and thus increase the throughput. context-aware RAT selection for the 5G network is pro-
The proposed method also activates the DC mode if a UE posed to improve the QoE, mainly the user throughput and
surpasses a certain threshold of velocity. In [62], the author delays. A fuzzy logic controller is modeled to extract the
proposed cashing technique for 5G which was used to store RAT suitability metric based on the BS load, UE mobility,
the future data contents in advance, to use when wireless backhaul load, traffic flow type and RSS. To improve the
resources are not sufficient. Offloading UEs from the heavily QoE of the user in 5G HetNets, machine learning-based
loaded cell was also proposed for load balancing. algorithms (namely k-nearest neighbor, KNN, and support
The works in [1], [63]–[65] are dedicated to reducing vector machine, SVM) can be applied to find the optimal
the HOR. HO skipping is a technique that skips some HO solution [73]. Two modified methods based on Tech-
HOs along a high-speed user trajectory to reduce the num- nique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution
ber of HOs and improve user throughput at high speeds. (TOPSIS) are proposed in [74] to improve the QoE of the
Three different topology-aware HO skipping techniques were user (mainly by reducing HORs, HOFs, and improving the
118920 VOLUME 7, 2019

user throughput). The first method uses an entropy weighting [79], [80] effect other HO performance related parameters,
technique and the second uses the standard deviation weight- the algorithm proposed in [34], [35], [37], [38], [47], [57],
ing technique to improve the HO metrics. Novel HO methods [58], [78] increased the computational complexity, the multi-
for 5G HetNets are proposed in [75], [76] to improve the connectivity in [27], [28], [31] [62], [63], [82] introduces high
throughput, load balancing and HO related metrics. The influ- UE complexity and high utilization of resources, and efficient
ence of the interference from both the macro cell and small HO algorithm were not shown in [28], [50], [64].
cell is taken into consideration to offload the user from the
congested cell for a forced HO to the best small cell. The best V. HANDOVER MANAGEMENT FROM LTE TO NR:
small cells are obtained from a reduced the neighboring cell DIFFERENCES, ENHANCERS AND CHALLENGES
list (NCL) which is optimized considering the time-of-stay In this section, we will highlight the differences between LTE
of the user and the SINR threshold. Cell load and the inter- and NR handover management, and we will elaborate on pos-
ference are taken into consideration for a modified A3 HO sible HO enhancements and future challenges. Specifically,
initiation event. A user-velocity-aware HO skipping scheme we will analyze the mobility enhancement in LTE and NR
is proposed in [77] to improve the average throughput of with some techniques and procedures available in the liter-
the mobile user in a two-tier cellular network. The proposed ature. We will discuss the mobility enhancement techniques
scheme sacrifices the best BS connectivity to reduce the considering the followings, HO management techniques for
HO rate and maintain a longer connection duration. To quan- high-speed scenarios, beam management and beam level
tify the performance of the proposed HO schemes in terms mobility and UL RS based mobility. This section also shows
of user throughput, a mathematical model is presented using the discussion for formulating an efficient HO scheme with
stochastic geometry. future research directions based on the conducted study.
The works in [78], [79] are focused on the HO signaling The HO procedure in NR is very similar to the procedure
reduction. A mobility management scheme based on UE in LTE, in which the network controls UE mobility based
location tracking was proposed in [78] to provide proactive on UE measurement reporting. NR has both the beam level
and seamless HOs. The sounding reference signals (SRSs) and the cell level mobility while LTE has just cell level
transmitted by the UE are utilized to determine the angle mobility. This being said, the adoption of high frequency
of arrival and line of sight path and thus track its location. bands with beamforming may increase interruption time in
This technique eliminates the HO signaling overheads and NR as compared to LTE due to beam sweep delay. In Rel-15
provides seamless mobility at the cost of increased com- NR, 0ms interruption time can be achievable by using intra-
putational complexity. Performance of an ultra-dense net- cell using beam mobility and addition/release of small cell
work millimeter-wave network with control and user plane for DC operation, whereby simultaneous connections with
separation architecture was compared with a conventional the source cell and the target cell are maintained. With newly
architecture in [79]. To minimize the HO cost with a certain introduced RACH-less HO in NR, the RACH phase to the tar-
coverage probability requirement, an analytical framework get cell is skipped thus reducing the interruption time during
was also proposed. The HO cost and coverage probabilities HO, avoiding random access at every HO and reducing the
outperformed than a conventional architecture. It was also HO delay.
found that the conventional architecture HO cost can be
reduced by adding more macro BSs while it is more beneficial A. OVERVIEW OF MOBILITY ENHANCEMENT
to add small cells with the proposed architecture. This makes IN LTE AND NR
the proposed architecture a key enabling architecture for 5G An overview of mobility enhancement solutions for both
small cells. LTE and NR is given in Table 2. Some of the solutions like
A novel HO technique was introduced in [80] for RACH-less HO and MBB have been adapted in LTE R14 and
5G URLLC to provide perspective on different trade-offs R15 whereas dual connection and UE based mobility are
between user plane delay and energy efficiency. The author currently under discussion in NR.
proposed a direct HO request from UE to target gNB based To target zero mobility interruption time and zero HOF
on UE measurements and bypassed the role of source gNB. rates even at 120 km/h speed for NR, a conditional MBB HO
If the request is accepted from the target gNB, data trans- was proposed in [83] for URLLC. The solution achieved zero
fer can begin more quickly. The UE will also provide HOF rate by receiving a HO command when the source cell
an alert to its source cell once the target gNB respond has good radio link conditions and execute the HO command
to its availability, to avoid unnecessary resource alloca- at the preferable location of the target cell. A zero interruption
tion from the source cell. Both energy efficiency and delay time was achieved through DL reception from the target cell
metrics can be improved due to faster HO to the better first and then releasing the resources of the source cell.
targeted gNB. The random access procedure can be avoided in some syn-
A comparison table of the literature survey is shown chronized network deployments, where the timing advance
in Table 3. Overall, location estimation errors are found in [1], between the source cell and the target cell is the same, or the
[9], [23], [30], [35], [39], [43], [64], [81], the works proposed value of timing advance is zero (e.g., in small cells). With
in [3], [13], [19], [29], [30], [36], [40], [43], [48], [49], combined MBB+RACH-less HO, the HO interruption time
VOLUME 7, 2019 118921

TABLE 2. Overview of mobility enhancements [84].
FIGURE 10. Two Hop network Architecture.
required to overcome the challenges in 5G. Due to the large

Doppler spread, it is difficult to accurately predict the chan-
nel, estimate and track the fast time-varying fading coeffi-
cients. Several channel models for high-speed train scenario
are proposed in literature such as [89]–[91] but still, more
research is required in this area. For effective mobility man-
agement, efficient HO algorithms are required to reduce the
number of HOs, latency, and HOF rates.
(HIT) can be decreased up to 6 ms. If the target gNB sends Two hop networks provide reliable and consistent QoS in
the DL data earlier to the UE without receiving an HO high-speed train scenarios. A relay on the rooftop of the train
complete message, the HIT can further be reduced close is used to relay the signal between BS and in train users as
to 0 ms. However, by considering the misalignment of the shown in Fig. 10 [86]. HOF rates, HO probability, outage
subframe boundary between the serving gNB and the target probability and HO latencies can be reduced using group
gNB, the HIT would be around 1 ms [83]. If a UE at the cell HO [92], [93], and collective channel state information can
edge stays logically connected to both the serving and the be received from users [94]. Multiple antennas in a linear
target cells, then the DC have higher reliability with minimum array can also be installed for high-speed trains [95]. In good
interruption time up to 0ms [84]. This solution is currently radio link conditions, massive MIMO increases the multi-
under discussion for NR. plexing gains and reduces the diversity gains to increase
the throughput. With poor radio link conditions, massive
B. HANDOVER MANAGEMENT IN HIGH-SPEED MIMO reduces the multiplexing gains and turns on the diver-
SCENARIOS sity gains to increase the SINR for more reliable transmission
The main challenge in 5G is to provide 50 Mbps data rate and better QoS.
in DL and 25 Mbps in UL for the users moving at very The main challenges for high-speed users’ mobility man-
high-speeds up to 500km/h for a high-speed train and up agement are high penetration loss, frequent HOs, cell selec-
to 250 Km/h for highway deployment scenarios with high tion, and heavy signaling overheads if users are moving
reliability and availability [85]. There are four main chal- in a group [86]. Techniques for solving mobility manage-
lenges for high mobility wireless communications [86], ment problem in high-speed scenario include deployment
1. Optimized network deployments optimization with Radio Remote Unit (RRU), mobile relay,
2. Advanced signal processing multi-connection, mobile cell, and geo-aided fast HO. These
3. Accurate channel estimation are described hereafter.
4. Effective mobility management We can optimize the deployment scenario by connect-
To meet the 5G requirements in high-speed train sce- ing multiple RRUs to a signal Baseband Unit (BBU) to
nario, optimized network deployment has an important role improve the coverage, reduce the dropped calls and the num-
(see adaptive optimization in [87] and enhancing video QoE ber of HOs [96]. It is good to plan the overlapping coverage
in [88]). In advance signal processing, new coding, modu- between the neighboring cells so that enough time will be
lation, precoding, diversity techniques, and waveforms are available for MRs that reduces the HOF rates effectively [97].
118922 VOLUME 7, 2019

TABLE 3. Literature survey comparison.
VOLUME 7, 2019 118923

TABLE 3. (Continued.) Literature survey comparison.
118924 VOLUME 7, 2019

TABLE 3. (Continued.) Literature survey comparison.
Mobile relay maintains the connection with all UEs within a using a sensor and GPS. The RRU will be switched ON only
bus, car, train, and metros and provides the UEs an unaware when the train is approaching, to make the process energy
HO process. The multi-connection process improves mobility efficient and reduce the interference [98].
performance at the cost of an increased number of signaling There are two major problems caused by the Doppler
overheads and greater UE complexity [86]. The train geo- Effect in high-speed scenario including, carrier frequency
graphical information (speed and location) can be tracked offset and fast fading. There are three strategies to deal
VOLUME 7, 2019 118925

with these problems, Doppler compensation, Doppler plan- D. UPLINK REFERENCE SIGNAL BASED MOBILITY
ning, and Doppler diversity [86]. Consider Doppler plan- Unlike current HO schemes, the network could track and
ning at the early stage of the network design as it is the locate the mobile user measuring an UL RS [105] instead
best option to reduce the Doppler Effect for fast fading. of having the UE measuring DL RS and reporting them
Doppler estimation and compensation are effective means to back (as noted in LTE). Uplink RS measurements are pro-
deal with auto frequency correction (AFC) at the speed up cessed in the network side to decide which BS or cell
to 350 km/h [99]. Doppler diversity in the receivers is used is the most appropriate to serve the user. Using the pro-
to improve the reliability of the transmissions, even at high posed method in [105], the transmission of MRs between
mobility with imperfect channel estimation. user and network is not required. Thus, it improves the
To improve the HO performance of the high-speed rail- mobility performance through the reduction of HO signaling
ways, an adaptive beamforming scheme for LTE with overheads.
dynamic adjustment of the HO HM was proposed in [41]. When UEs are moving together, they can jointly be tracked
A concept of moving cell was proposed for high-speed train in a group using one UL RS (instead of multiple RSs) poten-
scenarios at 60 GHz in [100]. Therein, a radio-over-fiber tially minimizing the resource consumption and improving
technique was employed to switch the serving cell in unison the overall HO efficiency [106]. Since massive MIMO uses
with the train and provide uninterrupted transmission to the the UL channel measurement of transmitted RS (e.g. Sound-
users. However, the direction of the train and velocity needs ing Reference Signal (SRS), in LTE), the same measure-
to be known for synchronization and providing adjustment to ments can be reused for mobility purposes to improve the
the passenger’s speed. network performance with very low impact on the UE. DL
data is transmitted to each UE without grouping as the group-
ing was just used to track the location of the UEs moving
C. BEAM MANAGEMENT AND BEAM MOBILITY together.
Multi-beam operation is one of the key features in 5G The following steps are used for group-based mobility
that differentiate 5G from LTE and assist to fulfill in [106]. The first step is to identify the UEs which are moving
5G requirements [101]. A survey of beam-related techniques in a cluster/group. In the second step, one UE out of the
for mmWave can be found, for example in [102], [103]. group is configured to send group UL RS and other UEs
A UE measures a set of analog beams for each digital port in that group stop transmitting the individual UL RSs. The
and reports the beam quality to BS which then assigns one or a control of a group was handed to the target gNB to make
small number of analog beams to the UE [104]. Beam man- the HO hidden from the UEs. When a UE is not a part of the
agement is required for above 6GHz to establish a seamless group, it starts its own UL RS transmissions. Using group-
and low latency link with the UE. Beam management proce- based UL RS transmission, interference reduces that allows
dures are categorized into beam measurement and reporting, the RS to be transmitted more frequently and thus reduces
beam determination, beam switching, and beam recovery the miss detection rate. But UL beacons lead to higher UL
[80]. A radio connection between a UE with N analog beams messages which might drain the user battery that contradicts
and a BS with M analog beams has a total of MN TX-RX with main 5G prerequisites.
beam pairs. As the number of TX/RX beams are typically The UE position information can be utilized in proactive
large, it is really important to ensure low overhead and UE RRM, network-enabled Device to Device (D2D) communi-
complexity during an efficient beam measurement. In beam cations, self-driving cars, the positioning of a large number
determination procedure, the BS and the UE find a beam of IoT sensors, Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs),
direction to ensure good radio channel quality. Beam switch and mobility management. For proactive HO, the SRSs are
procedure is performed when the quality of the current beam utilized in [78] to determine the UE location using Angle
degrades. Then the UE and the BS switch to another beam of Arrival (AoA) and line of sight path. To provide an
with better radio channel quality. When a UE is suffering from energy efficient solution from the user device perspective,
poor radio link conditions, it will get it as a beam failure. positioning algorithms are carried out at the network side.
In the case of beam failure, another beam from the same An Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) based solution is formu-
cell can be used (e.g. through beam recovery) that avoids lated in [107] for joint estimation and tracking of the Direc-
the frequent declaration of the RLF and cell reselection. tion of Arrival (DoA) and Time of Arrival (ToA) of the User
If the beam recovery procedure will not be successful, the UE Nodes (UNs) using UL RS. In order to fuse the individual
then initiates a RLF procedure and starts the cell reselection DoA and ToA estimates across one or more Access Nodes
process. As the propagation losses increase on the higher fre- (ANs) into an accurate UN position estimate, a second EKF
quencies, a higher number of beams are required to increase stage is used. The additional EKF stage provides an accurate
the coverage. Beam level mobility is managed at PHY and/or clock offset estimate and reliable clock synchronization of
MAC layer without RRC signaling. The main challenge in the access link. It is assumed that the locations of the ANs
beam management is finding the best combination of the TX are fully known for 2D positioning (xy-plane only). In future,
and RX beams (that both UE and BS jointly select), and this this work can be extended to 3D positioning, location-based
increases the UE complexity. beamforming and mobility management.
118926 VOLUME 7, 2019

E. DISCUSSION AND FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS VI. CONCLUSION

In this section, discussion on the formulation of an efficient To meet future cellular networks targets, efficient HO man-
HO scheme with some future research directions is provided agement techniques are required possibly with 0ms service
based on the conducted study. While formulating an efficient interruption time. To make this possible, we considered the
HO scheme, the following key points are needed to be con- HO techniques available in the literature and developed the
sidered, key points (based on the conducted study) need to be consid-
• MSE has great importance to improve the HO perfor- ered while formulating a HO problem.
mance. Through an accurate MSE, we can choose the Initially, we introduced some general concepts of radio
HM, A3 event and TTT adaptively. Using the infor- access mobility in cellular networks and highlighted the
mation of the following three time-varying parameters, current research focuses and major challenges in these
the number of cell reselections, fading frequency and areas. We found that for IDLE_MODE mobility, research
RSS, user with low, medium or high mobility state can efforts are devoted to reduce the paging delays and to
be estimated with improved accuracy. When the users provide dynamic TA list (TAL) configuration while for
are moving in a cluster with low speed and high micro CONNECTED_MODE mobility, HO parameter optimiza-
cell density, consider to power off the macro cell in this tion, early initiation of HO, and reducing signaling overheads
cluster for energy saving purpose. are the main research focuses. HO types related challenges
• When a user is in good radio link conditions, start are, saving UE battery power, load balancing among RATs,
EHOP and execute the HO only when a HO procedure is and improving the roaming quality. Current research efforts
required. This reduces the cases of RLFs before the HO. are also addressing the concepts that allow the UE to add
• Estimate the cell edge from RSS and start caching to and release different radio links autonomously to reduce the
store the future data contents so that it can be used when signaling overheads produced during the HO procedure.
the wireless resources are not available. This improves Then, we provided key features and entities involved in
the QoS of the network. LTE and NR mobility with a detailed literature survey. It is
• During cell selection, compare the top three cell uti- found that the basic HO scenario in NR is very similar to
lization and select the cell with low utilization. This the LTE except the entities involved and a slight change
procedure will provide an automatic load balancing. in HO steps. For example, the basic HO procedure in NR
• For high-speed cases, activate the DC mode and connect is completed in twelve steps while in LTE it goes through
the user with a macro cell (preferably). Estimate the time eighteen steps.
user stay at the micro cell from the speed of the user. As a next step, we found the HO management challenges
When a micro cell having good radio link conditions is and techniques to overcome these hurdles. Different solu-
less utilized and the time user stay at the micro cell is tions for mobility enhancement are elaborated for reducing
greater than the minimum threshold time, switch the user the service interruption time and it is found that the dual
towards the micro cell. connection based mobility has the lowest service interruption
This survey suggests that the current mobility mechanisms time. Also, HO management in high-speed train scenario can
suffer from the degraded performance when the size of cells be improved using two-hop network with geo-aided fast HO
is diminished and the speed of users is moderate to high. and considering the Doppler planning at the early stage of
So, a new set of solutions is required that enhances the the network design. In addition, the UL RS based mobility
network performance while at the same time reduces the method improves the network overall performance through
energy expenditures both at the network and the terminal side. the reduction of HO signaling messages because this method
The following ideas suggest the future work to improve the does not require MRs between user and network. Also,
mobility performance in future cellular networks (especially the group UL RS based mobility improves HO efficiency
the small cell deployments), through minimizing resource consumption.
• Implementation of UL RS based mobility in a system- Lastly, we found key points need to be considered while
level simulations to compare the performance of HO in designing an efficient HO scheme and research directions for
small cell deployment scenario with DL based measure- future evolution.
ment (for example, LTE mobility case). Also, find the
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[100] B. Lannoo, D. Colle, M. Pickavet, and P. Demeester, ‘‘Radio-over-fiber- XAVIER GELABERT received the M.Sc. degree
based solution to provide broadband Internet access to train passengers in electrical engineering from the KTH Royal
[topics in optical communications],’’ IEEE Commun. Mag., vol. 45, no. 2, Institute of Technology, Stockholm, in 2003, and
pp. 56–62, Feb. 2007. the joint B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in telecom
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J. Lorca, ‘‘Initial access, mobility, and user-centric multi-beam operation the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC),
in 5G new radio,’’ IEEE Commun. Mag., vol. 56, no. 3, pp. 35–41, Barcelona, in 2004 and 2010, respectively. Over
Mar. 2018.
the past 15 years, he has held research positions
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MUHAMMAD TAYYAB received the B.Sc.

degree from the University of the Punjab, Lahore,
Pakistan, in 2012, and the M.Sc. degree (Hons.) RIKU JÄNTTI (M’02–SM’07) received the M.Sc.
from the King Fahd University of Petroleum and degree (Hons.) in electrical engineering and the
Minerals (KFUPM), Saudi Arabia, in 2017, both in D.Sc. degree (Hons.) in automation and sys-
electrical engineering. He is currently pursuing the tems technology from the Helsinki University of
Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering with Aalto Technology (TKK), in 1997 and 2001, respec-
University, Finland. He has more than two years, tively. He was a Professor Pro Tem with the
from 2013 to 2015, of professional experience as Department of Computer Science, University of
an RF Planning and Optimization Executive at Wi- Vaasa. In August 2006, he joined Aalto University,
Tribe Pakistan Ltd. (Ooredoo Group). During his stay at KFUPM, he was Finland, where he is currently a Professor in
associated with the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology communications engineering and the Head of the
(KAUST), Saudi Arabia, as a Visiting Student and a KFUPM–KAUST Joint Department of Communications and Networking, School of Electrical Engi-
Research Initiative. He has been a Researcher with the Helsinki Research neering. His research interests include radio resource control, spectrum
Center, Huawei Technologies Finland Oy, since February 2018. His current management, and performance optimization of wireless communication sys-
research interest includes energy-efficient mobility for small-cell overlaid tems. He is an Associate Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR
cellular networks. He received the Gold Medal Award for obtaining the first TECHNOLOGY.
position in the B.Sc. degree.
118930 VOLUME 7, 2019

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Received August 4, 2019, accepted August 18, 2019, date of publication August 26, 2019, date of current version

A Survey on Handover Management:

Corresponding author: Muhammad Tayyab (muhammad.tayyab5@huawei.com)

I. INTRODUCTION it is equally important to provide reliable HO mechanisms as

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standalone architecture with traditional HO methods cannot

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• Inter-eNB HO with MME Change: In this case,

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TABLE 1. Some examples of HO failure types [26].

In the next subsections, we will provide the main causes of

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a consequence of the HO (i.e. intra-AMF). In addition,

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FIGURE 8. NR measurement model [59].

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proposed in [1] including, location-aware, cell size aware and

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TABLE 2. Overview of mobility enhancements [84].

FIGURE 10. Two Hop network Architecture.

required to overcome the challenges in 5G. Due to the large

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TABLE 3. Literature survey comparison.

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TABLE 3. (Continued.) Literature survey comparison.

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TABLE 3. (Continued.) Literature survey comparison.

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E. DISCUSSION AND FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS VI. CONCLUSION

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MUHAMMAD TAYYAB received the B.Sc.

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