Abstract

LTE-A (Long Term Evolution Advanced) is a fourth generation cellular network technology that
provides improved performance related to data rate, coverage and capacity compared to legacy
cellular systems. In this research, one of the main goals of LTE is to provide fast and seamless
handover from one cell to another to meet a strict delay requirement while simultaneously keeping
network management simple. Hence, the decision to trigger a handover is a crucial component in
the design process of handover, since the success and the efficiency, to a large extent, depends on
the accuracy and timeliness of the decision.
The design of an efficient and successful handover requires a careful selection of HO
parameters and the optimal setting of these. The LTE-A standard supports two parameters to
trigger the handover and select the target cell: hysteresis margin and Time-to-Trigger (TTT)
The research topic of this thesis, which is Performance Evaluation of Handover in LTE-
Advanced Cellular Mobile, focuses on different combinations or settings of Handover Margin
(HOM), TTT values and Relay Stations (RSs) to evaluate the handover performance based on
Reference Signal Received Power (RSRP) measurement within certain deployment scenarios,
such as different UE speeds, system loads and cell sizes.
The number of Hard Handover (HHO) depends on RSs hysteresis and time-to-trigger
combinations to evaluate the system performance in terms of number of handovers, signal-to-
interference plus noise ratio (SINR), throughput, delay and packet lost for UEs which are about
to perform the handover.