Handover management in high-dense femtocellular networks

Femtocell technology is envisioned to be widely deployed in subscribers’ homes to provide high data rate communications with quality of service. Dense deployment of femtocells will offload large amounts of traffic from the macrocellular network to the femtocellular network by the successful integration of macrocellular and femtocellular networks. Efficient handling of handover calls is the key for successful femtocell/macrocell integration. For dense femtocells, intelligent integrated femtocell/macrocell network architecture, a neighbor cell list with a minimum number of femtocells, effective call admission control (CAC), and handover processes with proper signaling are the open research issues. An appropriate traffic model for the integrated femtocell/macrocell network is also not yet developed. In this article, we present the major issues of mobility management for the integrated femtocell/macrocell network. We propose a novel algorithm to create a neighbor cell list with a minimum, but appropriate, number of cells for handover. We also propose detailed handover procedures and a novel traffic model for the integrated femtocell/macrocell network. The proposed CAC effectively handles various calls. The numerical and simulation results show the importance of the integrated femtocell/macrocell network and the performance improvement of the proposed schemes. Our proposed schemes for dense femtocells will be very effective for those in research and industry to implement.