Handover management in heterogeneous networks for 4G and beyond cellular systems

Abstract

New technologies are expected to play a major role for wireless cellular systems beyond the existing 4G paradigm. The need for several orders of magnitude increase in system capacity has led to the proliferation of low-powered cellular layers overlaid on the existing macrocell layer. This type of network consisting of different cellular layers, each with their unique characteristics including transmission power and frequency of operation among others is termed as a heterogeneous network (HetNet). The emergence of HetNets leads to several research challenges and calls for a profound rethinking of several existing approaches for mobility management and interference management among other issues.