An Improved Location-Based Handover Algorithm

for GSM Systems

Rong-Terng Juang, Hsin-Piao Lin, and Ding-Bing Lin
Institute of Computer and Communication, National Taipei University of Technology,
Taipei, Taiwan
s1669013@ntut.edu.tw, hplin@en.ntut.edu.tw, dblin@en.ntut.edu.tw

AbstractThe variation of signal strength caused by shadowings is a random
process, and handover decision mechanisms based on measurements of signal
strength induce the ping-pong effect. This paper proposes an improved
handover algorithm, which identifies the correlation among shadowing
components based on the estimates of mobile velocity, to suppress the pingpong
effect. The impacts of the estimation errors of velocity on handover performance
are investigated. The simulation results indicate that the number of un-necessary
handover can be reduced 9~17 percent by the proposed approach, compared to
the conventional method, while the signal outage probability remains similar.

Keywords-handover; mobile location; mobile velocity estimation; shadow fading.

I. INTRODUCTION
Handover refers to the mechanism by which an ongoing call is transferred from
one base station (BS) to another. The performance of the handover mechanism is
extremely important. Frequent handovers reduce the quality of service (QoS), increase
the signaling overhead on the network, and degrade throughput in data
communications. Many metrics have been used to support handover decisions,
including received signal strength (RSS), signal to interference ratio (SIR), distance
between the mobile station and BS, traffic load, and mobile velocity. The
conventional handover decision compares the RSS from the serving BS with that from
one of the target BSs, using a handover margin, a constant handover threshold value.
The selection of the margin is crucial to handover performance. If the margin is too
small, numerous unnecessary handovers may be processed. Conversely, the QoS
could be low and calls could be dropped if the margin is too large. The fluctuations of
signal strength associated with shadowing cause a call sometimes to be repeatedly
handed over back and forth between neighboring BSs, in what is called the
ping-pong effect.
Over recent years, many investigations have addressed handover algorithms for
cellular communication systems. A local averaging technique, which moves fast
fading component from the received signal strength, was proposed in [1] to allow the
conventional handover decision reacting more quickly to corner effects. A
timer-based hard handover algorithm was presented in [2] to prevent unnecessary
handovers caused by fluctuations due to shadowing, by which the choice of timer
interval introduces the tradeoff between handover number and handover delay. A
dynamic handover margin decision based on a traffic balancing rule was proposed in
[3] to resize the cells according to the spatial variability of traffic. A speed-sensitive
handover algorithm in a hierarchical cellular system was described in [4], in which
micro-cells serve the slowly-moving mobiles, and macro-cells serve fast-moving
mobiles. In [5] and [6], RSS, mobile location and velocity were used as metrics for
making handover decisions using fuzzy logic. A table lookup approach, proposed in
[7], determines handover margins based on the mobile location, the mean signal
intensity and the standard deviation thereof. Distance hysteresis for mitigating the
effect of shadowings on handover performance was presented in [8]. Making
handover decisions in various scenarios was presented in [9], in which a suitable
handover decision mechanism is selected when the mobile station is located in an area
with a pre-defined handover scenario.
In the literature, however, most handover algorithms, which are based on
information about mobile location, suffer from a lack of practicability. The
computational complexity of making a handover decision using fuzzy logic is
excessive, and establishing and updating a lookup table to support a handover margin
decision is time-consuming. The selection of a handover algorithm based on the
handover scenario only succeeds in cases that the propagation environment is similar
to one of the pre-classified environments, and involves complicated processes to
define the handover scenarios. It also relies on an updated database when applied in a
new mobile user environment. Furthermore, most studies assume that mobile location
can be perfectly determined using GPS (Global Positioning System), which is not
available for most existing mobile telephones. In reality, the performances of
available location estimators are far from that obtainable using GPS technique.
This paper proposes an improved handover algorithm based on the estimates of
mobile location (not using GPS) and velocity in a lognormal fading environment. The
proposed algorithm outperforms the conventional method in making handover
decisions for cellular systems by using location and velocity to identify the correlation
among shadowing effects. Moreover, the computational complexity of the proposed
algorithm is low, and the algorithm does not employ a database or lookup table.
II. PROPOSED HANDOVER ALGORITHM
A. System Model
In a GSM system, when a mobile station moves from BS1 to BS2, the signal
strength is measured and reported to the network in a constant 480 ms time interval
[10] to support a handover decision. The signal power level in decibels is the sum of
two propagation terms, namely path loss and shadowing; fast fading is ignored
because it is averaged out. Accordingly, the signal levels received from BS1 and BS2
at discrete time instants tk= k (where represents the time interval of 480 ms within
which the signal strength is measured), are given by P1[k] and P2[k], respectively,
1 1 1
[ ] [ ] [ ] P k m k u k = + (1)
2 2 2
[ ] [ ] [ ] P k m k u k = + (2)
where 1 m and 2 m are the received signal powers from BS1 and BS2, respectively, in
terms only of path loss, and
1
u and
2
u are the respective shadowings. The
auto-correlation coefficient,
ii
, of the shadowings is commonly assumed to be an
exponential function [11],[12],
1 2
2
{ [ ] [ ]}
exp( ), 1, 2,
i i
ii
i
E u k u k
d d i

= = A = (3)
where
i
is the standard deviation of shadowings;
2 1
d V k k A = ( V is mobile
velocity, non-negative number), and d is the decay distance (or correlation distance),
which ranges from around 25 to 100 m over urban, light urban, and suburban terrain
[13]. The cross-correlation coefficient,
ij
, of shadowings is called the site-to-site
correlation [14] and is calculated as
{ [ ] [ ]}
, 1, 2, i j
i j
ij
i j
E u k u k
i

= = = (4)
The correlation depends on 1) the angle between the two paths along the mobile
station to BS1 and BS2, and 2) the relative values of the two path lengths. Jay
Weitzen et al. verified that the shadowing components are slightly correlated even at
small angles [13].

B. Proposed Handover Algorithm
Define
21
[ ] P k as the difference between signal powers received from BS2 and
BS1 at time index k:
21 2 1 2 1 2 1 21 21
[ ] [ ] [ ] { [ ] [ ]} { [ ] [ ]} { [ ] [ ]} P k P k P k m k m k u k u k m k u k = = + = (5)
where
21
m represents the difference between signal powers received from BS2 and
BS1 in terms of path loss only,
21
u represents the difference between the shadowings
along the two paths. A handover from BS1 to BS2 occurs at time index k if the
following two criteria are satisfied simultaneously.
Criterion 1: P21 [k] h
Criterion 2: P 21 [k] P21 [k ] h
where h is the handover margin, and is a positive non-zero integer, which needs to
be carefully decided. In fact, criterion 1 is applied in making conventional handover
decisions. Because of shadowing, unnecessary handovers may be performed if a
handover decision is based only on this criterion. Therefore, criterion 2 is imposed to
improve the handover performance by determining whether path loss dominates the
variation in the received signal strength.
Assume
21
[ ] u k and
21
[ ] u k are highly correlated, such that the correlation
coefficient approaches unity; then, the difference between
21
[ ] P k and
21
[ ] P k can
be approximated as
( ) ( )
21 21 2 2 1 1 2 1
[ ] [ ] { [ ] [ ]} { [ ] [ ]}
up down
P k P k m k m k m k m k m m ~ + = + (6)
where
( )
2
up
m and
( )
1
down
m are the increase and degradation of the signal powers
received from BS2 and BS1 in terms of path loss, due to motion of the mobile station.
Consequently, the difference between signal powers is always chiefly a function of
path loss but not of shadowings. Restate, the proposed algorithm ensures that the
signal power received from the target BS is h dB higher than that received from the
serving BS (criterion 1), and that the difference between the signal powers is
dominated by path losses associated with motion of the mobile station(criterion 2).
Hence, unnecessary handovers caused by fluctuations in shadowings can be avoided.
In the proposed algorithm, is critical to handover performance. The decided
must guarantee highly correlation between
2
[ ] u k and
21
[ ] u k , and sufficient
space for signal variation caused by path loss. If is too large, criterion 2 is always
met and is helpless for the handover decisions. Conversely, the signal dose not vary if
is too small. How to decide a suitable value of is explained below.
Given
1
[ ] u k , if the standard deviations of shadowings are assumed to be equal,
such that
1 2 u
= = , then
2
[ ] u k ,
1
[ ] u k and
2
[ ] u k can be expressed as
follow, based on the Gauss-Markov process.
2
2 12 1 12 1
[ ] [ ] 1 u k u k X = + (7)
2
2 11 1 11 2
[ ] [ ] 1 u k u k X = + (8)
2
2 22 2 22 3
[ ] [ ] 1 u k u k X = + (9)
where
1
X ,
2
X and
3
X are identical independent Gaussian processes with
zero-mean and variance
2
u
, and
1 1 1 2 1 3
{ [ ] } { [ ] } { [ ] } 0 E u k X E u k X E u k X = = = .
Assume (1)
12 21 c
= = and (2)
11 22 a
= = , the following can be proven.
2
1 2 1 2
{ [ ] [ ]} { [ ] [ ]}
c u
E u k u k E u k u k = = (10)
2
1 1 2 2
{ [ ] [ ]} { [ ] [ ]}
a u
E u k u k E u k u k = = (11)
2
1 2 2 2
{ [ ] [ ]} { [ ] [ ]}
c a u
E u k u k E u k u k = = (12)
The correlation between
21
[ ] u k and
21
[ ] u k is
21 21 2 1 2 1
2 2
{ [ ] [ ]} {[ [ ] [ ]][ [ ] [ ]]}
(1 )(2 ) exp( / )(1 )(2 )
a c u c u
E u k u k E u k u k u k u k
V d


=
= =
(13)
The correlation coefficient must exceed a threshold,
T
; that is,
exp( / )(1 )
c T
V d > , such that
ln( )
1
T
c
d
V

(14)
Figure 1 displays the flowchart of the proposed handover decision. The mobile
station provides measurement reports to network to support handover decisions within
constant time intervals, . This data is buffered in the memory for the mobile location
estimation proposed in [15]. The handover alarm is triggered when the signal power
received from the serving BS is below a threshold, then, the availability of the target
BS is verified according to criterion 1. If the target BS meets criterion 1, the data
buffered in the memory is fetched to estimate the location and velocity of the mobile
station, saving the overhead cost of calculating location since the mobile station is not
continuously tracked. The value of can be obtained from mobile velocity using (14)
to confirm criterion 2. Consequently, a handover occurs if the target BS satisfies
criteria 1 and 2 simultaneously, otherwise the serving BS remains unchanged and the
handover decision is made again at the next time.
The results of the simulations using the proposed handover algorithm are
compared with those obtained using the conventional method. A software package,
SignalPro by EDX Engineering, was used to help the simulation. SignalPro includes a
set of planning tools for wireless communication systems. Figure 2 shows the
simulation environment that covers an area of 1.6 x 1.4 Km2. The trajectory from A
to B represents a route through which the mobile station moves. Polygons are
buildings with different heights. Seven BSs with omni-directional antennae are
designated by encircled crosses ( ). The height of each BS is 35m and the mean and
standard deviation of their transmitting power (EIRP) are 42.6dBm and 3.5dB,
respectively. Walfisch-Ikegami model, which had been verified to predict accurately
propagation path loss in urban areas with small cells [16], was applied to simulate the
path loss. Shadowings were simulated according to the model proposed in [17], where
d = 65 m and
c
= 0.1. The mobile station moved along the trajectory in Fig. 2 at
a constant speed of 30Km/h. The sampling interval for reporting measurements is
0.48s. The handover alarm threshold, handover margin, and correlation threshold
were set to 80dBm, 6dB and
T
= 0.85, respectively. Figure 3 is a typical
comparison between the received signal time series obtained by the conventional
method and that obtained by the proposed handover algorithm when the mobile
station moves along the beginning of the trajectory in Fig. 2. In the simulations, the
mobile velocity was assumed to be perfectly estimated and the standard deviation of
shadowing was set to 9dB. The results show that the conventional method involves
more handovers whereas the proposed algorithm prevents unnecessary handovers.


Figure 1. Flowchart of proposed handover decision.

Figure 2. The simulation environment.

Figure 3. Comparison of signals received according to the conventional method (top
plot) and the proposed handover algorithm (bottom plot).
III. ANALYSIS OF HANDOVER PERFORMANCE WITH
LOCATION ERRORS
The proposed algorithm requires the mobile velocity to determine . Since the
GPS receiver is not available in most existing mobile devices, considerations must be
given to the effects of the estimation errors of velocity upon handover performance.
The velocity of the mobile station was estimated based on Doppler frequency shift in
[18]. However, the estimated Doppler frequency is unreachable in most standards of
mobile cellular systems. This paper presents a means of estimating mobile velocity
based on mobile location estimations.
For simplicity, the problem is reduced to the one-dimensional case. The mobile
location estimate at time index k is modeled as

[ ] [ ]
L
L k L k n = + (15)
where [ ] L k is the actual mobile location, and
L
n represents the location error,
which is modeled as a zero-mean Gaussian process with variance
2
L
, as in [19].
Previous location information is used to estimate the current velocity. The size of the
estimation window is M, so the estimated locations

{ [ ], [ 1],..., [ 1] L k L k L k M +
are used to estimate mobile velocity. An adequate integer
(1 2 and ( ) is even) m m M M m s s + is chosen such that the mean of

{ [ ],..., [ ( ) / 2 1] L k L k M m + + can be used as a more accurate version of

[ ( ) / 4 0.5] L k M m + + , which is denoted by

'

[ ] L i , and the mean of

{ [ ( ) / 2],..., [ 1]} L k M m L k M + + can be used as a more accurate version of

[ (3 ) / 4 0.5] L k M m + + , which is denoted by

'

[ ] L j . Then, the estimated mobile

velocity at time index k has the form
' '

[ ] [ ]

[ ] [ ]
1
v
L i L j
V v k v k n
m

= = = +

(16)
where
v
n is the error in the estimated velocity and is also a zero-mean Gaussian
process with variance
2 2 2 2 2
[4/( )] ( )
v L
M m M m = . Given suitably chosen M and
m , the mobile velocity can be estimated accurately. As a simple example, M = 7 and
m = 3 are chosen, as presented in Fig. 4, where
'

[3] L and
'

[5] L are
'

[3] { [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]}/ 5 L L L L L L = + + + + (17)
'

[5] { [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]}/ 5 L L L L L L = + + + + (18)
The estimated mobile velocity is
' '

[7] [5] [3] / 2 [7]
v
V v L L v n = = = + (19)
where the variance of
v
n is
2
(1/ 25)
L
.
However, the mobile location is a two-dimensional problem in reality. The
estimates of location on the horizontalaxis and the vertical-axis at time index k are
respectively expressed as
2 2

( [ ]) ( [ ])
x y
V v k v k = + (21)
where [ ]
x
v k and [ ]
y
v k are the velocity estimations on the horizontal-axis and the
vertical-axis, respectively. Denote the actual velocity of the mobile as V and assume
the variances of the error terms, in [ ]
x
v k and [ ]
y
v k , equal
2
v
, the probability
density function (p.d.f.) of

V is a Rice distribution with Rice factor

2 2
/(2 )
v
K V =
[14],[20],
2
0 2 2

2

( ) exp{ }exp[ ] ( )
2
v
v v v
V V V K
f V K I

= (22)
where
0
( ) I z is a modified Bessel function of the first kind and zeroth-order. A larger
K, which corresponds to a faster mobile or a lower
v
yields a more accurate
estimate of velocity because the p.d.f. curve is sharper. Moreever, redefine (14) as

ln[ /(1 )] /( ),
T c
d V = distributes as

( ) ( )

V
f f

= (23)
where ln[ /(1 )] /
T c
d = . Figure 5 plots the p.d.f. curves of

given
various location errors (
L
). Given the parameter settings
{ 0.1, 0.85, 65 , 0.48 , mobile velocity = 30 Km/h}
c T
d m s = = = = , the actual
0.929. The accuracy of estimate is very high because (1)

is run off during

handover decisions, and (2)

is a positive non-zero integer, which resulting in

=1
with very high probability.
Handover number and handover delay (referred also as crossover point) are often
used as performance measures [1], [2], [17]. In our study, however, signal outage
probability, defined as the rate that the received signal from serving BS is less than a
threshold, is substituted for handover delay because the cell shape of each BS is an
irregular polygon instead of a regular hexagonal structure, which resulting in
difficulty in defining handover delay. With reference to the same case as simulated in
Section II, Fig. 6 compares the performances of the proposed algorithm and the
conventional method averaged over 2000 iterations. The standard deviations of
shadowings were set to 3, 6 and 9 dB, and the location errors were set to 0, 30, 60 and
90 m. In estimating the velocity, M and m were chosen as 9 and 3. The horizontal and
vertical axes in Fig. 6 respectively represent the total number of handovers and the
signal outage probability associated with the outage threshold at 95 dBm. Symbols
, and indicate the performance in 3, 6 and 9 dB shadowing
environments, respectively. The solid line and the dotted line represent the results
obtained using the conventional method and the proposed algorithm, respectively.
Using the proposed algorithm reduces the number of handovers and only slightly
increases in signal outage probability. The performance improvement measured as the
decrease in the number of handovers over that obtained using the conventional
method ranges from 9 to 17 percent.

Figure 4. An example of estimation of mobile velocity from location. (M=7, m=3)

Figure 5. Probability density functions of associate with different location errors.

Figure 6. Comparison of handover performances by simulations.

IV. CONCLUSIONS
An improved location-based handover algorithm has been presented. The
algorithm suppresses the ping-pong effect in cellular systems base on the estimate the
mobile velocity. The effects of location errors on handover performance were
examined since the GPS-location is not available in most existing mobiles. The
proposed method exploits the correlation properties of shadowings to avoid
unnecessary handovers in the overall environment. The simulations indicate that the
number of un-necessary handovers can be reduced 9~17 percent by the proposed
method compared to the conventional one, while the signal outage probability remains
similar. Besides, the computational complexity of the proposed algorithm is low and
no database or lookup table is required.

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