Computer Communications 174 (2021) 81–91

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Computer Communications
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/comcom

Multi-criteria handover mobility management in 5G cellular network

Md. Rajibul Palas a , Md. Rakibul Islam a , Palash Roy a,b , Md. Abdur Razzaque a,b ,
Ahmad Alsanad c , Salman A. AlQahtani c , Mohammad Mehedi Hassan d,c ,∗
a Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Green University of Bangladesh, Dhaka, Bangladesh
b Green Networking Research Group, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh
c
College of Computer and Information Sciences, King Saud University, Riyadh 11543, Saudi Arabia
d
Research Chair of Pervasive and Mobile Computing, King Saud University, Riyadh 11543, Saudi Arabia

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: To fulfill the future demand and expansion of the coverage of the network, ultra-dense deployment of small
5G cell (SC) is an optimal solution for future 5G networks, which will ensure the UEs (User Equipment) continuous
E-MOORA connectivity. However, these small cells (SCs) lead to the issue of interference, additional unnecessary handover
Q-learning approach
(HO), signaling overhead, and which in turn decreases the overall quality of service (QoS) of the users.
Quality-of-service
In this paper, an intelligent mobility management system based on Enhanced Multi-Objective Optimization
Handover optimization
Method by Ratio Analysis (E-MOORA) and Q-learning approach is introduced for handover optimization.
E-MOORA method is the combination of modified entropy weighting technique and Multi-Objective Opti-
mization Method by Ratio Analysis (MOORA) which introduces vector normalization. The proposed E-MOORA
method judicially exploits the performance parameters and thus reduces ranking abnormality when it selects a
HO target cell. Q-learning approach is applied to select the optimal triggering points to minimize the effect of
frequent unnecessary handovers for satisfying user QoS requirements. The performance analysis results depict
significant performance improvement in terms of minimizing the unnecessary HO, radio link failure, and user
throughput compared to other existing Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) methods.

1. Introduction
The rapid evolution of wireless technology triggered the expansion
of the number of mobile users. It has been expected that there will
be around 7.26 billion mobile users worldwide by 2022 [1]. Due
to this fast increasing number of device and the volume of traffic,
providing the best Quality-of-Service (QoS) to all of the users has
become a major concern in the heterogeneous 5G network [2]. The 5G
cellular system provides additional productive quality such as seamless
connectivity, higher throughput, higher network capacity, and massive
device connectivity than 4G network [3,4]. For these purposes, Third
Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has specified the architecture of
the fifth generation mobile network that supports high data rate, high
speed, and low latency [5]. In recent years, the 5G network has gained
much popularity for providing real-time services such as augmented
reality, virtual reality, online video gaming and video conferencing [6].
To maintain the always best connection of the increasing mobile users
in the 5G cellular systems, deployment of the traditional macro cells at
any time and anywhere is unrealistic due to higher cost [7] which in
turns incapable of meeting the increasing traffic demand. Therefore, to
get the technological benefit from 5G it is high time to integrate small
cell technology in 5G cellular network [8,9].
The idea of small cells (SCs) has been introduced in the 5G to
deal with the huge traffic demand [7,8]. The small cells have lower
coverage area and transmit power requirements compared to macro
cells (MCs). However, an MC has higher radius and consumes more
energy than a small cell. Although small cell technology has enormous
technological benefits, the dense deployment of the SCs have led to
unnecessary handovers due to the frequent movement of the users,
increasing the radio link failures. Therefore, deployment of small cells
also creates some constraint in the network such as signaling overhead
due to frequent handover. Efficient deployment of the resources in the
SCs help the user to get higher QoS and real-time services in the 5G
environment. However, when a mobile user moves from the serving
SC to another, users can connect to multiple SCs along the path and
Reference Signal Received Power (RSSP) of serving SC gets degraded
which also affects the user QoS. Fig. 1 depicts an example scenario of
a 5G cellular environment. In this figure, we can see that when the
user 4 moves from the home to office, it can connect to multiple SCs
namely SC5, SC7 and SC8 at the same time. That means a user may
have multiple movement trajectories from source SC to destination SC
to transfer data. If the optimal target SCs cannot be selected for the
users, it can suffer from radio link failure or unnecessary handover.

∗ Corresponding author at: Research Chair of Pervasive and Mobile Computing, King Saud University, Riyadh 11543, Saudi Arabia.
E-mail address: mmhassan@ksu.edu.sa (M.M. Hassan).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comcom.2021.04.020
Received 1 February 2021; Received in revised form 19 March 2021; Accepted 19 April 2021
Available online 22 April 2021
0140-3664/© 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
M.R. Palas, M.R. Islam, P. Roy et al.
Fig. 1. 5G cellular environment.
Therefore, selecting the optimal SCs due to user mobility has become
an utmost research challenge to minimize the unnecessary handovers.
A very few research works have been accomplished on that par-
ticular handover (HO) management problem in 5G small cell cellular
networks. A single criterion Receive Signal Strength (RSS) based ver-
tical handover scheme has been proposed in [10]. Later an extended
version of this scheme by adopting signal strength threshold, SINR
(signal to interference plus noise ratio), distance of user has been
discussed [11]. However, these conventional type handover schemes
could not reduce the number of unnecessary handovers in the small
cell network. This is caused by the fact that their decision on selecting
the target handover cell is merely dependent on a single metric. On the
contrary, the multi-criteria based handover algorithms [7] were pro-
posed with the combination of various weighting techniques to reduce
the frequent unnecessary handover and radio link failure. Moreover,
they suffer from ranking abnormality and fail to provide appropriate
ranking among the available cells because of not dealing beneficial
and non-beneficial metrics separately. Later an improved, enhanced
and modified Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) method [12] has
been introduced, where the authors tried to improve the performance
by modifying the actual MCDM methods. The authors designed an
algorithm based on cosine similarity to rank alternative networks. Yet,
they could not effectively minimize the radio link failure due to not
adopting any handover triggering mechanism. Furthermore, almost
none of the above works considered energy consumption of the mobile
users. As a consequence, their algorithms were not energy efficient.
Whereas, energy consumption is a major issue for mobile nodes. Above
observations have motivated us to develop an optimal handover mo-
bility management system for 5G cellular networks that can ensure
lower number of unnecessary handovers and radio link failure while
increasing user’s mean throughput.
In this paper, we develop an optimal intelligent scheme of multi-
criteria based mobility management system called E-MOORA (En-
hanced Multi-Objective Optimization Method by Ratio Analysis) to
mitigate the above challenges. The proposed E-MOORA method is a
combination of modified Entropy weighting technique and modified
Multi-Objective Optimization on the basis of Ratio Analysis (MOORA)
which ranks the available target small cell (SC) based on multiple
handover metrics such as delay, SINR, current load on cell (CLC), user
transmitted power (UTP) and user movement probability (UMP) from
the mobility model. The proposed method adopts the vector normaliza-
tion to normalize the handover metrics which effectively minimizes the
ranking inconsistency prospect which helps us to successfully identify
the optimal target cell as well as it improves the throughput of the
users. The E-MOORA algorithm also improves the user mean energy
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Computer Communications 174 (2021) 81–91
efficiency by leveraging the user transmitted power while ranking
the available target cell. After selecting the optimal SC, appropriate
triggering points such as Time-to-Trigger (TTT) and hysteresis (Hys)
are updated using the Q-learning approach. The Q-learning method
avoids too early and too late handovers which helps us to minimize
the number of radio link failures. The significant contributions of this
research are recapped as follows:
• We develop an optimal handover mobility management algorithm
namely E-MOORA which incredibly reduces unnecessary number
of handovers and radio link failure while enhancing user mean
throughput.
• We introduce vector normalization technique in the E-MOORA
method that successfully minimizes the effect of the probability
of ranking abnormality.
• We integrate Q-learning approach to set the optimal values of
triggering parameters such as time-to-trigger and hysteresis which
in turns reduce the probability of radio link failure by providing
the optimal handover triggering points.
• The simulation result of our proposed E-MOORA method accom-
plished in the MATLAB simulation environment depicts the signif-
icance performance improvement in terms of user mean through-
put, handover failure probability and the number of handovers
compared to the other MCDM approaches.
The rest of the paper has been categorized in the following order.
Section 2 summarizes the existing solution and the pros and cons
of the literature works. In Section 3 we have described the system
model of our propose model and all the QoS parameters. In Section 4
demonstrates our proposed E-MOORA method in detail. In Section 5 the
results of the propose solution has been shown and the performance of
the proposed E-MOORA method has evaluated and compared with the
existing models. And finally, a conclusion has been drawn in Section 6.
2. Related work
Small cell deployment in fifth generation cellular network has be-
come a prominent technology in recent years [2]. Though the densely
deployment of small cells has enhanced the chances of continuous con-
nectivity of user equipment (UE), this also leads to frequent handovers.
Due to this increasing number of handovers, mobility management and
resources sharing have become challenging issues in dense deployment
environment of small cells. To mitigate this issues there have been a
substantial amount of research works related to mobility management
and efficient handover system [7,10,13,14].
A single metric namely received signal strength (RSS) based con-
ventional vertical handover scheme has been discussed in [10]. In this
scheme, the received signal strength of neighboring cells is compared
and handover is executed if the signal strength of the serving cell is
lower or signal strength of target cell is higher than the predefined
RSS threshold. Further this scheme is improved by adopting received
signal strength (RSS) threshold, bandwidth and SNR as metrics from
target cell [11]. However, the authors did not focus on load of the
target cell signal interference from neighboring cells. In [15], handover
decision was taken based on SINR value of target cells instead of RSS
value. However, this method cannot provide seamless connectivity to
the mobile users because this single handover metric fails to select
the optimal target SC properly. Furthermore, this method increases
the probability of the handover ping-pong effect [16] because of the
higher number of unnecessary handovers of the users. Distance of the
user equipment to the adjacent cell and RSSI are taken into account as
the handover metric in [17]. If the distance from user to the serving
cell outstrips from the candidate cell and the signal strength of the
adjacent cell has enhanced than the serving cell by a given threshold,
handover is then performed. However, they did not focus on optimizing
the number of handovers thus suffering from unnecessary handovers
and throughput degradation.
M.R. Palas, M.R. Islam, P. Roy et al. Computer Communications 174 (2021) 81–91

In [18], the authors have proposed a fuzzy logic based vertical

handover system which increases the battery life, quality-of-experience
(QoE) and mobile speed. Unlike the traditional method that works
with exact values, fuzzy logic permits a degree of uncertainty. In fuzzy
logic, non crispy metric value and weight value are transformed into
crispy value by using triangular fuzzy membership function. In a fuzzy
system these values range from 0 ∼ 1. A TOPSIS (Technique for Order
of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) method based handover
decision technique is described in [19]. TOPSIS is a multi criteria deci-
sion making (MCDM) method that calculates relative closeness of each
target cell using Euclidean distance between each cell for both of the
positive and negative ideal solutions. A significant number of works has
been carried out in the decision making process using MCDM methods
in [20–22]. A multi-criteria event detection method has been applied
in determining the actual news in [22]. The MCDM methods have also
been applied in the Information Centric Network (ICN) to determine
the current state of the system in [21]. In [23,24] the combination
of fuzzy logic and TOPSIS method based hybrid handover method
were presented. The fuzzy logic is applied to calculate the weight of Fig. 2. Ultra dense deployment of small cell.
handover metrics and later the TOPSIS method ranked the cell using
those weighting values. However, due to the design complexity, there is
a huge delay during the handover execution and as a result users suffer
𝑗 ∈  is set as 40 m [27] to ensure the overlap between two adjacent
from higher radio link failure rate. F. Ouyang et al. [25] have developed
𝑖 ∈ . Fig. 2 depicts system architecture of a dense small cell scenario
Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) based handover mechanism
in the 5G cellular network.
that uses cost function to perform handover decisions. The target base
The user set per small cell 𝑖 ∈  is denoted by  = {1 , 2 , … ,
station will calculate the cost of each target cell using cost function and
𝐾 }, where 𝐾 denotes the total of user equipment (UE) that needs
the target cell that has lower cost is selected for handovers. However,
to be performed handover into the target SC 𝑖 ∈ . When an user
this method also suffers from massive design complexity and cannot
𝑘 ∈  moves from one SC to another, the signal-to-interference-plus-
satisfy the user quality of service.
noise ratio (SINR) value of the serving cell reduces and the SINR value
On the contrary in [7,26] authors proposed TOPSIS based multi
of the neighboring cells increases. To maintain the service continuity
criteria handover algorithm which are the combination of various wei-
the UE should keep a minimum SINR threshold i.e., 𝛾 𝑡ℎ . Each user
ghting technique. In TOPSIS cells are ranked based on ideal positive
𝑘 ∈  can get signal from multiple SCs at the same time when it
solution (optimal cell that performs better metrics values) and the
ideal negative solution (worst cell which has the worst metrics values). leaves the serving SC, however, it can be connected to only one small
However, they did not consider load balancing as a result it can cell at a time. Based on the handover metrics, an user 𝑘 ∈  connects
increase unnecessary handovers. In [27] authors developed a GRA- to the optimal SC 𝑖 ∈ .
HO method. A q-learning based TOPSIS handover method incorporated In this framework, transmission delay, Signal to Interference plus
by the authors [13]. Q-learning approach is introduced to obtain the Noise Ratio (SINR), Current Load on Cell (CLC), and User Movement
appropriate handover triggering time during mobility. But almost all Probability (UMP) are used as the Handover (HO) metric to select
of them have major weakness that is the ranking reversal phenomenon the optimal target cell. Let, 𝑠(𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑘 , 𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑔𝑘 ) denotes the source location
and misspend network resources [28] due to inconsistent 𝑊𝑗 that can of a user 𝑘 ∈  . The UMP metric can be achieved from mobility
give inappropriate ranking. A improved version of TOPSIS method [12, prediction model for the users based on their historical data and current
29,30] proposed to mitigate above weaknesses. However, it is seen that contextual information and we can predict the destination location
they cannot minimize the unnecessary handover thus user faces worst 𝑑(𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑘 , 𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑔𝑘 ) of that user. We can also predict the movement trajectory
quality of experience due to not considering benefit and cost metric from source location to destination and based on the geographical
separately. location and received signal strength we can find out all the suitable
Most of the existing works have focused on the optimizing of SCs 𝑖 ∈  on that movement trajectory [31]. On the other hand,
handover metric using sum normalization technique and suffer from current load on cell 𝛹𝑖 is used to learn the available resource block
ranking abnormality as well as increase the number of handovers. Se- on cell 𝑖 ∈ . When a user 𝑘 ∈  travels through one small cell
lecting the optimal triggering points of handovers help us to reduce the to another, the cell with the highest available resource block has the
too early or too late handovers which in turns reduce the probability higher priority to act as a target cell. 𝜂𝑖𝑘 is the transmitted power of
of radio link failure. These observations have driven us to design an user 𝑘 ∈  for small cell 𝑖 ∈ 𝑆. If we considered that the transmitted
intelligent handover mobility management system which will set the power is the main source of power consumption for target cell as well
triggering point optimally and reduce number of handover as well as as if we can handover the user 𝑘 to the cell 𝑖 that requires a less
improve the system throughput by providing higher QoS to the users. power requirement, this metric can improve the energy efficiency and
provide higher QoS. The key notations to illustrate proposed system is
3. System framework and assumptions listed in Table 1.

We assume a two tier heterogeneous (HetNet) network environ-
ment that consists of 𝑀 number of macro cells (MCs) denoted by
 = {1 , 2 , … , 𝑀 }, where the radius of each MC considers as
500 m. There have 𝑁 number of small cells (SCs) denoted by  =
{1 , 2 , … , 𝑁 }. All the small cells 𝑖 ∈  are deployed randomly using
uniform random distribution in the network. Therefore, there are total
𝑁𝑏𝑠 = 𝑁 +𝑀 base stations in the network. The radius of each small cell
considers as 100 m. The distance between two small cells 𝑖 ∈  and
4. Design of E-MOORA method
In this section, we have unfolded the details of the E-MOORA
design components. Our proposed E-MOORA method is the improved
conventional Entropy weighting method and improved Multi-Objective
Optimization on the basis of Ratio Analysis (MOORA) by incorporating
Vector Normalization technique for both beneficial and non-beneficial
metrics to overcome ranking abnormality which is a phenomenon of

83
M.R. Palas, M.R. Islam, P. Roy et al.
Table 1
List of notations.
Symbols Description
 Set of Small cells (SCs)
 Set of the Users in a small cell
𝐷𝑖 Transmission delay from SC 𝑖 ∈ 
𝛾𝑖𝑘 Received SINR value of user 𝑘 ∈  form 𝑖 ∈ 
𝜂𝑖𝑘 Transmitted power of user 𝑘 ∈  form 𝑖 ∈ 
𝐿 Length of the data packet
𝑊𝑖𝑗 Weighting value for 𝑗th metric of SC 𝑖 ∈ 
𝛾 𝑡ℎ SINR threshold
𝑃𝜙 Decision matrix
ℜ𝑆𝑖 Downlink RSRP received from SC 𝑖 ∈ 
𝑅𝑎𝑘 Total allocated resources for user 𝑘 at SC 𝑖
𝛹𝑖 Cell capacity of SC 𝑖 ∈ 
reversal ranking [32]. The E-MOORA method incorporates the vec-
tor normalization, in which beneficial (for maximization) and non-
beneficial (for minimization) metrics are dealt with separately to ensure
comparability of metric. It is seen that normalization technique can
minimize the effect of the ranking abnormality [27]. The handover met-
rics of the proposed E-MOORA method are described in the following
subsection.
4.1. Handover parameters
Handover in cellular systems is a process of transferring the user
from coverage under a base station to another. Handover parameters
control this process and play a significant role to reduce the unneces-
sary handovers. To maintain the user’s service continuity with higher
Quality-of-Experience (QoE), the proposed E-MOORA algorithm ranks
the available target cells based on handover parameters. After ranking
the target cells, the E-MOORA method handovers the service of the
users to the cell that has the highest rank. Therefore, to have an
efficient handover mobility system that provides higher QoE to the
users, we need to take the appropriate handover parameters that have
great significance to minimize unnecessary handovers while increasing
system throughput.
4.1.1. Delay
Delay is one of the most important QoS parameter which assists
the users to get real-time services in the wireless cellular networks.
The delay indicates the amount of time needed to transmit a packet, a
group of packet from the source UE to target UE. Higher delay reduces
the QoS drastically for the real-time delay sensitive applications. If
the delay from a certain SC is higher than a predefined threshold
value, then this particular SC will be avoided. Effective utilization of
transmission delay (𝐷𝑖 ) can reduces the handover failure rate as well
as it would increase throughput of the system. The 𝐷𝑖 from cell 𝑖 ∈ 
can be computed as
𝐿 𝑅𝑖
𝐷𝑖 = , (1)
𝑅𝑖
where, 𝐿 denotes the length of the data packet. Packet is the smallest
unit of data and packet length is the length of the data bits that reside
in a data packet. 𝑖 is the achievable bit rate from SC, 𝑖 ∈ . Here,
bit rate is the amount of bits that are transmitted per unit of time. It is
commonly measured in bits per second (bps). Higher bit rate decreases
the delay to transfer a data packet.
4.1.2. Signal-to-Interference-plus-Noise Ratio (SINR)
SINR is the ratio of signal quantity and summation of interference
from neighbor cell plus noise power. It is the measurement of signal
quality that indicates the strength of the receiving signal compared to
the interference and noise. In the proposed E-MOORA system, the SINR
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Computer Communications 174 (2021) 81–91
helps to select the cell that offers higher SINR value, which in turns
reduces the ping-pong effect of the system [16] as well as the number
of unnecessary handovers. The downlink SINR 𝛾𝑖𝑘 from 𝑖 received at
user 𝑘 in the similar way [7] as follows.
ℜ𝑆𝑖
𝛾𝑖𝑘 = ∑𝑁 . (2)
𝑏
𝜇𝑆 × 𝜉𝑖𝑘 + 𝛿 2
𝑗=1,𝑗≠𝑖 𝑗
Here, ℜ𝑆𝑖 is the downlink reference signal received power (RSRP)
∑ 𝑁𝑏
received for small cell 𝑖 ∈  at user 𝑘 ∈  , 𝑗=1,𝑗≠𝑖 𝜇𝑗𝑆 is the
summation of the downlink power of all interfering SCs except serving
cell 𝑖 i.e., the neighboring SCs. 𝜉𝑖𝑘 is the channel gain between user
and cell 𝑖 allowing the path loss and shadowing effects [33]. And 𝛿 2
is the noise power which is the measurement of total noise in a given
channel bandwidth.
4.1.3. User Transmitted Power (UTP)
User transmitted power 𝜂𝑖𝑘 is an important metric to take handover
decision, which measures the amount of energy needed for transmitting
the data stream. If we assumed that user transmitted power 𝜂𝑖𝑘 as
the main source of power consumption, then it can predict the power
consumption of 𝑘 ∈  at 𝑆𝑖 ∈ , which can be expressed similar
to [27] as follows:
𝐼𝑘𝑈 × 𝜏𝑖𝑆 × 𝛾 𝑡ℎ
𝜂𝑖𝑘 = , (3)
ℜ𝑆𝑖
where, 𝐼𝑘𝑈 is the interference of user 𝑘 which is caused by all the
users at same cell 𝑖 . 𝜏𝑖𝑆 is the transmission power of the small cell
𝑆𝑖 ∈ 𝑆 i.e., the amount of energy is needed to transmit the minimum
amount of data. 𝛾 𝑡ℎ denotes the minimum requirement of SINR value
i.e. SINR threshold for maintaining the service continuity. ℜ𝑆𝑖 is the
downlink reference signal received power (RSRP) received from the SC
𝑖 ∈  which is measured in dBm. The rationale behind the selection
of this handover metric to avoid the mobile users to handover a cell
that requires more energy to transmit the data which in turns enhance
the energy efficiency of the users.
4.1.4. Current Load on Cell (CLC)
This metric is incorporated to know the number of obtainable
resource blocks at the small cell 𝑖 ∈ . A resource block is the smallest
unit of bandwidth [34]. The rationale of including this criterion is to
limit the maximum number of handovers to the SC 𝑖 ∈ , which in
turns reduces the handover failure rate and hence would improve the
QoS. The cell capacity 𝛹𝑖 of 𝑘 at small cell 𝑖 ∈  can be defined
similar to [35].
𝛹𝑖 = 𝐵𝑊 × (1 − 𝑅𝜌𝑖 ) × 𝑙𝑛(1 + 𝛾𝑖𝑘 ). (4)
Here, 𝐵𝑊 denotes the system bandwidth, 𝜌𝑖
is the total ratio of
resources allocated to all active user equipments (UEs) at cell 𝑖 com-
pared to the cell’s total resources, 𝑅𝑡𝑖 , which can be defined as
∑ 𝑎
𝜌 ∀𝑘 𝑅𝑘
𝑅𝑖 = 𝑡
, (5)
where, 𝑅𝑎𝑘 is the resources allocated to user 𝑘 from small cell 𝑖 .
∑
Hence ∀𝑘 𝑅𝑎𝑘 is all resources allocated to all active user in SC 𝑖 .
4.1.5. User Movement Probability (UMP)
Due to the dense deployment of small cells, several frequent han-
dovers will be encountered. User Movement Probability (UMP) can be
an optimal handover QoS parameter to predict the optimal target SC
which in turn reduces the call-dropping probability, handover latency
in the 5G cellular networks [36]. For each user 𝑘 ∈  , we can predict
the path from the source location 𝑠(𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑘 , 𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑔𝑘 ) to destination location
𝑑(𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑘 , 𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑔𝑘 ) based on the historical and contextual information, which
can be sequence of the most probable SCs visited by the 𝑘 ∈  .
The historical movement trace of all users are stored in the historical
M.R. Palas, M.R. Islam, P. Roy et al. Computer Communications 174 (2021) 81–91

movement database (HMD) and contextual information is stored in user
contextual database (UCD) associated with user ID similar to [31].
We can predict the path of a user 𝑘 ∈  from Destination Path
Prediction model (DPPM), where it is assumed that DPPM has the prior
knowledge of the destination of the 𝑘 ∈  from the Destination
Prediction Model (DPM). The DPM maintains the HMD and UCD where
user movement, contextual information, living area of each user and
the user’s frequently visited locations (FVLs) like home, offices, road
intersections, restaurants are stored from the historical data. All the
possible locations are considered as nodes and the road segment is
considered the road between two nodes. The DPM extracts historical
data based on the type of the day and type of the day to find out the
probability of the user’s destination. The DPPM starts the path predic-
tion from the SC of the source location 𝑠(𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑘 , 𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑔𝑘 ) and iterates through
the adjacent SCs until it reaches the destination location 𝑑(𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑘 , 𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑔𝑘 ).
The candidate SCs from all adjacent SCs of SC 𝑖 ∈  are selected based
on transition movement probability of 𝑘 ∈  from the historical
data. A penalty function is used to find out the best SC among all
candidate SCs and this function assigns zero for the dead end road
segment i.e., when there is no possibility to reach the destination by
taking this road segment. Subsequently, the improved MOORA that is
called the E-MOORA method has been discussed in detail.
4.2. Improved entropy weighting technique
Entropy [37] is an objective weighting method that calculates the
Here, 𝑖𝑗 is the 𝑗th normalized metric of 𝑖th small cell, 𝑖 ∈  and
𝑖𝑗 ∈ [0, 1]. It is done by dividing each metric in the decision matrix
𝑃 𝜙 by its corresponding column squared metrics sum. Similarly, for the
non-beneficial metric the normalization equation can be expressed as
𝑋𝑖𝑗
𝑖𝑗 = 1 − √ , (9)
∑ 𝑚
2
𝑖=1 (𝑋𝑖𝑗 )
where, 𝑖𝑗 is the 𝑗th normalized value of non-beneficial metric of 𝑖th
small cell 𝑖 ∈  and 𝑖𝑗 ∈ [0, 1]. In Eq. (9), we have subtracted
Eq. (8) from 1 to ensure the minimum value of non-beneficial metric.
Because the lower the value of non-beneficial metric the higher will be
the system performance. Therefore, our goal is to reduce the impact of
these metrics to handover the users to the cells that offer higher value
of non-beneficial metrics.
STEP 3: Now we find the co-officiant divergence degree of entropy
which is denoted by 𝑑𝑗 . The more divergent the values of 𝑖𝑗 for
𝑗th metric, the higher its corresponding entropy coefficient divergence
degree 𝑑𝑗 and the more important the 𝑗th metric for handover decision.
𝑑𝑗 can be measured as follows,
𝑑𝑗 = 1 − 𝑗 , (10)
where,
∑
𝑚

amount of decision information each metric has. In this improved 𝑗 = 𝐾 × 𝑖𝑗 × 𝑙𝑛(𝑖𝑗 ). (11)
𝑖=1
entropy weighting technique we incorporate vector normalization in-
stead of sum normalization to reduce ranking abnormality. Ranking 1
Here, 𝐾 = − 𝑙𝑛(𝑚) is a constant that guarantees 0 ≤ 𝑗 ≤ 1. The higher
abnormality is the phenomena of reversal ranking, which means that divergent values of 𝑖𝑗 of 𝑗th metric, the higher its corresponding 𝑑𝑖𝑗
the ranking of the alternatives changes when omitting any of the lowest value and the 𝑗th of SC 𝑖 ∈  has more importance for handover
ranked alternative [27]. This weakness can lead the system to a higher
decision. In other words, if the 𝑗th metric has similar 𝑖𝑗 values for all
number of unnecessary handovers.
alternatives small cell in normalized decision metrics, then the value of
STEP 1: At first, we formulate a decision matrix 𝑃 𝜙 = (𝑥𝑖𝑗 )𝑚×5 . Here,
co-efficient becomes 𝑗 ≈ 1, which in turn produces 𝑑𝑗 ≈ 0 and weight
Matrix 𝑃 𝜙 contains 𝑚 number of small cells and 5 number of metrics.
of that metrics becomes 0. That is why, this metric has less effect on
This decision matrix consists of all the handover metrics inside of it. A
handover decision making.
decision matrix can be constructed as follows,
STEP 4: Now, we can calculate the entropy weighting value as fo-
⎡ 𝑋11 𝑋12 𝑋13 𝑋14 𝑋15 ⎤
llows,
⎢𝑋 𝑋22 𝑋23 𝑋24 𝑋25 ⎥
⎢ 21 ⎥ 𝑑𝑗
 𝜙 = ⎢ 𝑋31 𝑋32 𝑋33 𝑋34 𝑋35 ⎥ , (6) 𝑊𝑗 = ∑ , (12)
⎢ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⎥ 5
𝑑𝑗
⎢ ⎥ 𝑗=1
⎣𝑋𝑚1 𝑋𝑚2 𝑋𝑚3 𝑋𝑚4 𝑋𝑚5 ⎦
where, 𝑊𝑗 is the final weighting value of the 𝑗th metric of small cell
where, each column of the 𝑃 𝜙 represents the handover metrics and each 𝑖 ∈ . In this weighting method, different range of metric value is not
row represents the available target cells. Here, 𝑥𝑖𝑗 corresponds the value affected because, 𝑁𝑖𝑗 is normalized.
of the 𝑗th metric of 𝑖th target cell and 𝑖 = 1, 2, … , 𝑚 and 𝑗 = 1, 2, … , 5.
Thus, the elements of the matrix can be written as 𝑋𝑖1 = 𝑆𝐼𝑁𝑅,
𝑋𝑖2 = 𝑈 𝑀𝑃 , 𝑋𝑖3 = 𝐷, 𝑋𝑖4 = 𝛹 and 𝑋𝑖5 = 𝜂. 4.3. Improved multi-objective optimization

⎡ 𝑆𝐼𝑁𝑅11 𝑈 𝑀𝑃12 𝐷13 𝛹14 𝜂15 ⎤

⎢ 𝑆𝐼𝑁𝑅21 𝑈 𝑀𝑃22 𝐷23 𝛹24 𝜂25 ⎥ Brauers et al. [38] have developed the MOORA method which is
⎢ ⎥ a very well established and famous method in multi criteria decision
𝑆𝐼𝑁𝑅31 𝑈 𝑀𝑃32 𝐷33 𝛹34 𝜂35 ⎥
 =⎢
𝜙
, (7)
⎢ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⎥ making (MCDM) area. There are several MCDM methods and most
⎢𝑆𝐼𝑁𝑅 𝑈 𝑀𝑃𝑚2 𝐷𝑚3 𝛹𝑚4 ⎥
𝜂𝑚5 ⎥ of them suffer from rank reversal abnormality. To minimize the phe-
⎢ 𝑚1
⎣ ⎦ nomenon of the probability of rank reversal abnormality, our proposed
E-MOORA incorporates vector normalization for both the beneficial
STEP 2: Now, we normalize the 𝑃 𝜙 to ensure fair comparison
(the greater the better) and non-beneficial metric (the smaller the
and make each metric dimensional metrics. We have used vector nor-
malization technique to normalize the value of each element in the better).
matrix 𝑃 𝜙 . As mentioned earlier vector normalization reduces ranking STEP 1 (Normalized decision matrix): At first a decision matrix (DM)
abnormality. This weakness can lead the system to a higher number of needs to design by using metrics value and then we normalize the DM
unnecessary handovers by selecting an inappropriate handover target and make normalized decision matrix (NDM). To design this NDM we
cell. Here, SINR, UMP, are the beneficial metrics and user transmitted
use as follow.
power 𝜂, delay 𝐷, current load of cell 𝛹 are the non-beneficial metrics.
Beneficial metrics are normalized as follows, ⎡ 11 12 13 14 15 ⎤
⎢ ⎥
 22 23 24 25 ⎥
𝑋𝑖𝑗  = ⎢ 21 . (13)
𝑖𝑗 = √ . (8) ⎢ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⎥
∑𝑚 ⎢
𝑖=1 (𝑋𝑖𝑗 )
2
⎣ 𝑚1 𝑚2 𝑚3 𝑚4 𝑚5 ⎥⎦

85
M.R. Palas, M.R. Islam, P. Roy et al. Computer Communications 174 (2021) 81–91

Table 2 Finally, we calculate the performance value of each small cell. The
Q-table of different states and actions.
highest performance value of the cell will be the optimal handover
Average speed (km/h) State () Default Hys (dB) Default TTT (s) target cell,
0–4 0 3.0 0.0–5.5
4–8 1 2.5 0.0–2.56 ⎡ 0.2471 ⎤
⎢ ⎥
8–12 2 2.0 0.0–1.25 0.1737 ⎥
𝑖 = ⎢ .
12–17 3 2.0 0.0–1.02 ⎢−0.1202⎥
17–22 4 1.5–2.0 0.0–0.64 ⎢−0.1005⎥
22–28 5 1.5–2.0 0.0–0.48 ⎣ ⎦
28–34 6 1.5–2.0 0.0–0.256 Here, the first cell has the highest performance value. Therefore, the
34–41 7 1.5 0.0–0.52
41–48 8 1.0 0.0–0.52
first cell is the optimal handover target cell for our algorithm and the
48–56 9 0.5 0.0–0.48 E-MOORA method handovers the service of the user to the first cell.
56–64 10 0.5 0.0–0.256 Our in-depth look into the values of decision matrix also supports the
64–70+ 11 0.0–0.5 0.0–0.16 decision.

4.5. Updating the triggering point using Q-learning approach

Here,  is the normalized decision matrix and the elements of the
Q-learning (QL) is a model free reinforcement learning techniques in
matrix are normalized values of the handover metrics of correspond-
which agents learn from the environment in a given state [39]. Agents
ing available target cells. Where, 𝑖 = 1, 2, … , 𝑚 and 𝑗 = 1, 2, … , 5
find the optimal policy in a given state from all possible actions. A QL
corresponds to the value of the 𝑖th target cell of the 𝑗th metric.
problem is defined by three tuples ⟨, , 𝑟⟩, where ,  are the set
STEP 2 (Calculation of performance value): Finally, the performance of states and actions, respectively and 𝑟 is the reward value. An action
value of small cell 𝑖 ∈  is calculated as: 𝑎𝑡 ∈  is performed at time 𝑡 by an agent to move form one state 𝑥𝑡 to
the next state 𝑥𝑡+1 . Then, the Q-learner agent receives an immediate
∑
𝑔 ∑
5
reward for successful completion of tasks. The reward indicates the
𝑌𝑖 = (𝑊𝑗 × 𝑖𝑗 ) − (𝑊𝑗 × 𝑖𝑗 ). (14)
𝑗=1 𝑗=𝑔+1
weighted sum of the expected value starting from the current state (𝑡)
to all future states. The agent tries to achieve the maximum rewards by
Here, 𝑌𝑖 is performance value and 𝑔 is the number of the beneficial taking optimal action for each states. The reward for the state–action
metric that should be maximized and (𝑔 + 1) is the number of non- pair can be defined as 𝑄 ∶  ∗  → 𝑟.
beneficial metric that should be minimized. Based on 𝑌𝑖 value all the Assume 𝜋 acts as policy factor for choosing state–action pair defined
candidate cell are ranked in descending order. And users are handover by 𝑄𝜋 (𝑥, 𝑎). The expected value function for every state–action pair can
to cell that has highest 𝑌𝑖 value. be expressed as:
STEP 3: Now the cells are ranked from the best to worst based on 𝑄(𝑥𝑡 , 𝑎𝑡 ) = (1 − 𝛼) × 𝑄(𝑥𝑡 , 𝑎𝑡 ) + 𝛼(𝑟𝑡 + 𝛾 × 𝑚𝑎𝑥𝑎 𝑄(𝑥𝑡+1 , 𝑎𝑡 )) (15)
higher to lower 𝑌𝑖 values.
Here, 𝑟𝑡 is the reward for the present state 𝑠𝑡 and 𝛼 is the learning
rate (0 ≤ 𝛼 ≤ 1). 𝛾 indicates the discounted factor (0 ≤ 𝛾 ≤ 1),
4.4. An illustrative example
which creates a balance between the immediate and future reward. The
value of 𝛼 = 0 denotes that the no further learning is required and it
To explain the operation principle of the E-MOORA method, we retains the previous knowledge. On the other hand, 𝛼 = 1 discards the
include an example scenario, of the network status. For this example previous knowledge and considers only the latest knowledge. The basic
scenario we consider 4 available target cells. From these 4 cells, we functionality of Q-learning approach is described in Algorithm 1.
have to select the optimal handover target cell that will ensure lower During the time of initiating the handover operation, optimum
number of unnecessary handovers and radio link failure while increas- settings of HO parameters such as Hysteresis (hys) and Time-To-Trigger
ing user mean throughput and user mean energy efficiency. First, we (TTT) play an important role. Optimal setting of these triggering param-
have build a decision matrix as follows. eters by the Q-learning approach helps to reduce the too early or too
late handover failure and handover ping pong effect. In the E-MOORA
⎡𝑆𝐼𝑁𝑅 𝑈 𝑀𝑃 𝐷𝑒𝑙𝑎𝑦 𝑈𝑇 𝑃 𝐶𝐿𝐶 ⎤
⎢ ⎥ method, velocity of the users is defined as the state  and Hys-TTT
⎢ ⎥ tuples by the cells are defined as the actions similar to [13]. Table 2
−109 80 500 1000 60 ⎥
 =⎢
𝜙
. shows several state–action pair that have been used in Q-learning in
⎢ −106 75 450 920 50 ⎥
⎢ −81 67 410 905 ⎥
40 ⎥ the proposed E-MOORA method.
⎢ The overall algorithm of our proposed E-MOORA method is de-
⎣ −45 62 380 750 30 ⎦
scribed in Algorithm 2. In Algorithm 2, at first the candidate target
Next, we have to normalize the decision matrix using vector normal- small cell list 𝑆𝑐 is set as ∅. Then the candidate SCs are selected as
ization technique, where, SINR and UMP are the beneficial metrics. On
the other hand, Delay, UTP and CLC are the non-beneficial metrics in
the E-MOORA method. The normalized decision matrix is,
Algorithm 1 Q-Learning Approach
⎡𝑆𝐼𝑁𝑅 𝑈 𝑀𝑃 𝐷𝑒𝑙𝑎𝑦 𝑈𝑇 𝑃 𝐶𝐿𝐶 ⎤ Input: Q-value estimates as 𝑄(𝑥𝑡 , 𝑎𝑡 ) = 0, 𝑥 ∈ , 𝑎 ∈ 
⎢ ⎥
⎢ ⎥ Output: Proper setting of triggering points according to the Q-value of
0.6122 0.5607 0.4283 0.4434 0.3530⎥
 =⎢ . the speed of 𝑘 ∈ 
⎢ 0.5953 0.5256 0.4855 0.4879 0.4608⎥ 1: while Terminal condition not is satisfied do
⎢ 0.4549 0.4696 0.5312 0.4963 ⎥
0.5687⎥
⎢ 2: Observe the current state 𝑥 = 𝑥𝑡
⎣ 0.2527 0.4345 0.5655 0.5826 0.6765⎦ 3: Select and execute action 𝑎𝑡 ∈  and receive reward 𝑟𝑡
Now, we find out the weighting value of each cell as follows, 4: Observe the next state 𝑥 = 𝑥𝑡+1
5: Update estimated 𝑄(𝑥𝑡 , 𝑎𝑡 ) using Eq. (15)
⎡𝑆𝐼𝑁𝑅 𝑈 𝑀𝑃 𝐷𝑒𝑙𝑎𝑦 𝑈𝑇 𝑃 𝐶𝐿𝐶 ⎤ 6: update 𝑡 → 𝑡 + 1 and set current state 𝑥 = 𝑥𝑡+1
𝑗 = ⎢ ⎥.
7: end while
⎢ ⎥
⎣ 0.3928 0.0369 0.0769 0.0722 0.4211⎦

86
M.R. Palas, M.R. Islam, P. Roy et al.
Algorithm 2 E-MOORA algorithm at 𝑖 ∈ 
Input: HO metrics i.e., delay, SINR, CLC, UMP, UTP
Output: The performance value of cell 𝑖 ∈ 𝑆𝑐 , 𝑌𝑖
1: 𝑆𝑐 = ∅, 𝑌 = ∅
2: 𝑆𝑐 = {𝑠𝑖 ∶ 𝑆𝐼𝑁𝑅𝑖 > 𝛾 𝑡ℎ , ∀𝑖 ∈ }
3: Formulate the decision matrix 𝑃 𝜙 for 𝑠𝑖 ∈ 𝑆𝑐
4: Normalized 𝑃 𝜙 by using (8) and (9), respectively
5: for all 𝑖 ∈ 𝑆𝑐 do
6: Calculate weight 𝑊𝑗 and 𝑌𝑖 by using (12) and (14), respectively
7: 𝑌 = 𝑌 ∪ 𝑌𝑖
8: end for
9: 𝛽 = argmax𝑖∈𝑌 𝑌𝑖
10: Update the triggering points using algorithm 1
11: Handover the UE to 𝛽 containing 𝑖 ∈ 
serving SC 𝑖 ∈  based on the SINR value in line 2. When a small
cell 𝑆1 ∈ 𝑆. Then, decision matrix (DM) 𝑃 𝜙 is formulated for the
candidate small cell and normalize the entries of 𝑃 𝜙 in line 3 and 4,
respectively. After that, we calculate the weight value 𝑊𝑗 of each metric
for each SC and objective function value 𝑌𝑖 for SC 𝑖 ∈  from line 6
to 8. Then, we select the target cell 𝛽, which gives the highest value of
objective function in line 9. Finally, the values of the triggering points
are updated in line 10 and handover the UE to the target SC in line 11.
The complexity of Algorithm 2 can be analyzed as follows. Line 2
in Algorithm 2 is enclosed in a loop that iterates at most || times.
Lines 5 to 7 are enclosed in a while loop that iterates || times in the
worst cases. In line 10, for updating the triggering point, Algorithm 1
runs approximately at most ||. Here,  indicates the total number
of iterations. Therefore, the overall complexity of Algorithm 2 can be
calculated as 𝑂(|| + || + ||) ≈ 𝑂(|| + ||).
5. Performance evaluation
In this section, we have evaluated our proposed E-MOORA method
and compared its performance with conventional HO method [40], PE-
TOPSIS method [7], GRA-HO method [27]. All methods and parameters
are implemented using MATLAB simulation tool [41].
5.1. Simulation environment
We assume that a small network consists of a macro cell and 50
small cells, which are distributed using uniform random distribution
in an area of 1000 × 1000 m2 . The radius of the macro cell and small
cell is 1000 m and 100 m, respectively. To ensure the overlap between
the SCs, we consider that the minimum distance between two SCs is 40
m [27]. We consider the fixed bandwidth 20 MHz for one SC to another.
We have considered the transmission power for small cell within 15
dBm ∼ 30 dBm and for macro cell is 30 dBm ∼ 50 dBm. The simulation
is run for 600 s and each graph data point is generated using average
of the results got from the 50 simulation runs by considering different
random seed values. All the simulation parameters are listed in Table 3.
5.2. Performance metrics
To measure the performance of our proposed method and compares
the performance by using the standard performance metrics. All the
performance metrics are described below:
• Number of Handover: Number of Handover refers to the how
many times a user equipment (UE) is transferring from serving
base station to the target one. The higher value significantly
decreases the system performance.
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Computer Communications 174 (2021) 81–91
Table 3
Simulation parameters.
Parameters Value
Radius of macro cell 500 m
Radius of small cell 100 m
Number of small cells 50
Small cell to Small cell bandwidth 20 MHz
MC transmitted power 30 dBm–50 dBm
SC transmitted power (𝜏𝑖𝑆 ) 15 dBm–30 dBm
MC shadowing standard deviation 8 dB
SC shadowing standard deviation 10 dB
SINR threshold, 𝛾 𝑡ℎ −8 dB
Time window 1 s
• Probability of Radio Link Failure: While handing over the UEs
to the target cell just at that moment the SINR of the target
cell goes below the predefined threshold value then radio link
failure declared. The higher the value, the lower is the system
performance.
• User Mean Energy Efficiency: User mean energy efficiency is
the measurement of how many bits are carried per joule energy,
i.e., how much energy is utilized to transmit the amount of bits. If
the power consumption of user for particular system is high, then
the user mean throughput can greatly reduce for that user which
in turn degrades the user QoS.
• User Mean Throughput: Throughput is defined as the actual
amount of data that can be moved from one place to another in
unit period of time. Here, user mean throughput is the average
throughput gained by the user, which is measured in Mbps. The
higher value indicates the higher system performance.
5.3. Simulation result
We evaluate the performance of proposed E-MOORA method by
varying the number of the user under a small cell, velocity of the user
and number of the small cells in the network.
5.3.1. Impacts of varying velocity of users on system
In this simulation, we have varied the velocity of user from 0 km∕h ∼
70 km∕h, while the total number of users per small cell and the number
of small cells are fixed at 35 and 30, respectively.
Fig. 3(a) depicts that, with the increasing number of velocity,
there is an increasing number of handovers. Increasing velocity of the
users indicates that users move from one SC to another frequently.
Our proposed E-MOORA method outperforms all methods due to the
consideration of user movement probability parameters that success-
fully identifies the most probable small cell and significantly reduces
unnecessary HO. Furthermore, minimization of the effect of the ranking
abnormality and integrating the Q-learning algorithm for selecting the
optimal triggering point to start the handovers also put a great impact
on lowering the number of unnecessary handovers for the proposed
E-MOORA algorithm. On the other hand, conventional HO method
performs worse in that case because they have only considered SINR
value to identify the target cell. Here PE-TOPSIS performs better than
GRA-HO because of its weighting technique that correctly calculates
the weight.
Probability of the radio link failure rate has enhanced with the
increasing number of velocity that is depicted in Fig. 3(b). This is
because with the increasing velocity of the users, the small cells (SCs)
get less amount of time to perform the handover execution at the target
cell. At the time of handover execution, the user moves to another
cell and therefore, the optimal target SC cannot be selected properly.
Initially, the probability of the radio link failure rate is almost same
for all of the methods. However, when the velocity increases, the E-
MOORA method performs better than the state-of-the-art works. This is
because E-MOORA method successfully identifies the actual triggering
M.R. Palas, M.R. Islam, P. Roy et al.
Fig. 3. Impacts of varying user velocity levels on system performances.
point of handover using Q-learning approach and incorporating user
movement probability as the HO metric, which help us to find out the
best target cell. Therefore, E-MOORA outperforms in terms of radio link
failure.
On the other hand, 3(c) shows that the user mean energy efficiency
is reduced for all algorithms with the increasing number of velocity
levels. Reason of this downhill graph is that when the velocity of the
user increases, the number of handovers increases, thus more energy
consumed by the users. However, the E-MOORA method gives better
results compared to the others due to incorporating the User Trans-
mission Power (UTP) as the handover metric which helps us to avoid
the selection of that cell which consumes more energy and enhances
the energy efficiency. However, conventional method gives the lowest
result in this case because mobility of user’s suffer from unnecessary
handovers and radio link failure that decreases user mean throughput
thus decreases energy efficiency greatly. However, the GRA-HO method
performs better than PE-TOPSIS and conventional because considering
User Transmission Power (UTP) criterion metric.
As velocity increases the throughput of user for all method is
reduced that is shown in Fig. 3(d). Conventional and GRA-HO method
have the worst throughput performance due to high number of han-
dover and radio link failure probability. However, from 0 km/h∼30
km/h velocity our proposed method had better throughput because of
minimum number of Ho but after 30 km/h velocity it faces high number
of HO and radio link failure so throughput decreases like other method.
5.3.2. Impacts of varying the number of users per small cell
In this simulation, we have varied the number of users per SC from
0 ∼ 50. While the velocity of the user is at medium speed which is
35 km/h and number of small cells fixed at 30.
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Computer Communications 174 (2021) 81–91
Fig. 4(a) illustrates that the number of handovers increases for all
the HO methods with the increasing number of users traveling from
one cell to another. Our proposed E-MOORA method performs better in
that case because of incorporating the user movement probability from
the mobility model and modified weighting technique that uses vector
normalization technique calculates normalized value for both beneficial
and non beneficial metrics separately to minimize the ranking abnor-
mality. Integration of Q-learning approach to select the appropriate
triggering point properly also helps us to minimize the unnecessary
handovers. However, in other MCDM (i.e., PE-TOPSIS & GRA-HO)
methods have slightly lower results due to typical sum normalization
method in weighting technique. Conventional methods perform worse
in that case because they have considered only a single metric to initiate
the handover.
Fig. 4(b) illustrates that the number of handovers increases for all
the HO methods with the growing number of users traveling from
one cell to another. Our proposed E-MOORA method performs better
because of incorporating the user movement probability and modi-
fied weighting technique. The ranking abnormality is minimized due
to separately normalizing the beneficial and non-beneficial metrics
by the proposed weighting technique. Integration of Q-learning ap-
proach to select the appropriate triggering point properly also helps
us to minimize the unnecessary handovers. However, other MCDM
(i.e., PE-TOPSIS & GRA-HO) methods have produced slightly lower
values due to using typical sum normalization in weighting technique.
Conventional methods perform worse in that case because they have
considered only a single metric to initiate the handover.
On the other hand, Fig. 4(c) illustrates the user mean energy effi-
ciency decreases with the increasing number of users. This is because
M.R. Palas, M.R. Islam, P. Roy et al.
Fig. 4. Impacts of varying number of users on system performances.
when the number of users increases per cell then the signaling over-
head as well as interference from neighbor cells and serving cells
are increased. This greatly lowers the system throughput thus lower
the user mean efficiency. Proposed E-MOORA method has higher user
throughput with the increasing number of users per cell. The reason
behind the fact is that to incorporate the user transmit criterion metric
as HO metric that effectively utilizes the energy efficiency in the se-
lection process of small cells. Furthermore, user movement probability
metric also helps us to significantly reduce the unnecessary handover
and improve system throughput. While conventional methods cannot
perform better without considering the transmitted power of the user
as the HO metric. However, the GRA-HO method performs better than
PE-TOPSIS because it keeps an eye on the user transmitted power
metric.
User mean throughput is decreased with the increasing number
of users is depicted in Fig. 4(d). We observe that the proposed E-
MOORA method performs close to the other existing two MCDM meth-
ods namely PE-TOPSIS and GRA-HO. However, our proposed E-MOORA
method provides slightly higher throughput due to accurately predict-
ing the target cell by incorporating the user movement probability.
E-MOORA shows lower HO rate and radio link failure probability
because of accurate weighting value that is why the mean through-
put of user is higher. However, other state-of-the-art methods suffer
from ranking abnormality and inconsistent 𝑊𝑗 that is why they have
achieved the downhill throughput line than E-MOORA.
5.3.3. Impacts of varying number of small cells on system
In this simulation, we have varied the number of small cells from
4 ∼ 14 while the number of users per small cell and the velocity of the
users are fixed at 35 and 30 km/h, respectively.
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Computer Communications 174 (2021) 81–91
Fig. 5(a) shows that increasing the number of small cells causes
growing occurrence of handovers. This is because when the density of
the small cells increases, the users frequently change their positions
in the adjacent small cells which in turn increases the number of
handovers. In this simulation, the conventional method gives the worst
result than others because they have only considered a single metric to
instantly execute handovers. The PE-TOPSIS and GRA-HO methods suf-
fer from ranking abnormality to provide the weight value of the metrics
which in turn fails to select the optimal SC efficiently. The E-MOORA
method reduces the ranking abnormality and improves the accuracy of
weighting values to select the optimal target cell. The metric ‘current
load on cell’ helps to find out the optimal cell that has available
resource blocks and user movement probability suggests better move
to a cell which helps to minimize the number of handovers. Optimal
setting of the triggering point using Q-learning method also helps to
minimize the number of unnecessary handovers. For that reason, the
E-MOORA method outperforms other state-of-the-art approaches.
An upward graph Fig. 5(b) illustrates the increasing number of radio
link failure probability with the increasing number of small cells. This
is because with the increasing number of small cells (SCs), users change
the SC frequently and probability of radio link failure increases. Here,
our developed E-MOORA method outstrips than others method due to
measuring the optimal weight value and less design complexity which
helps us to execute the UE to top ranked target cell within a window
time in the E-MOORA method. In addition, E-MOORA method incor-
porates Q-learning method for finding the optimal handover triggering
point to minimize the radio link failure rate. On the other hand GRA-
HO performs better than PE-TOPSIS due to having less In that case,
conventional method also performs worst because of depending only
one handover metric.
M.R. Palas, M.R. Islam, P. Roy et al.
Fig. 5. Impacts of varying number of small cells on system performances.
Fig. 5(c) illustrates that user mean energy efficiency improves in all
the studied method with the increasing number of small cells. This is
due to traffic load generated by the users has distributed among the
increasing number of small cells which in turns reduce the signaling
overhead and improve throughput. Among all method, conventional
handover method has shown lower energy efficiency due to having sig-
naling overhead and higher number of handovers. On the other hand,
our proposed E-MOORA method has highest mean energy efficiency.
This is because the user transmitted power metric has put significant
impotent in metric weighting thus this is reflected in handover decision.
However, PE-TOPSIS performs lower energy efficiency than GRA-HO
due to not considering user transmitted power criterion as handover
metric.
The impacts of varying number of small cells on user mean through-
put is described in Fig. 5(d). Simulation result shows that an earthward
graph for all method as number of small cells increases. Among all
method proposed E-MOORA method has higher user mean throughput.
The reason behind this better result is the less number of handover
and radio link failure rate that increases the user quality of service. On
the other hand PE-TOPSIS has better result than GRA-HO due to less
number of handover frequency that achieved for accurate weighting
values. But conventional method gives lowest throughput compare to
others because of higher handover frequency and radio link failure rate
that put the system in a great quality of service degradation.
6. Conclusions
An intelligent mobility management scheme based on multi-metric
handover method and Q-learning approach for 5G densely deployed
small cell cellular network namely E-MOORA was proposed in this
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Computer Communications 174 (2021) 81–91
paper. To select the optimal target cell, delay, SINR, current load on
cell and user movement probability were used as the HO metrics to
minimize the handovers. While MOORA multi-criteria decision making
method and modified entropy weighting technique were used to rank
the candidate target cells and provide weight among the parameters,
respectively to select the optimal target cell. However, both MOORA
and entropy method incorporates sum normalization method instead of
vector normalization. Due to incorporating user movement probability
as the HO metric and vector normalization method to reduce ranking
abnormality, our proposed E-MOORA method was able to select the
optimal target cell efficiently. Moreover, E-MOORA also set the trigger-
ing points such as Time-To-Trigger and hysteresis optimally to reduce
the handover failure rate using Q-learning approach. The experimental
results demonstrated significant performance improvement in terms
of minimizing the radio link failure and enhancing the user mean
throughput as high as 20%, and 15%, respectively compared to PE-
TOPSIS method and 25%, and 20%, respectively compared to GRA-HO
method.
In future, we will upgrade this method in an inter macro cell
scenario so that UE can be handed over from one small cell to another
situated in a different macro cell.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Md. Rajibul Palas: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation,
Software. Md. Rakibul Islam: Software, Methodology, Writing - review
& editing. Palash Roy: Data curation, Validation, Writing - review &
editing. Md. Abdur Razzaque: Supervision, Writing - review & editing.
Ahmad Alsanad: Writing - review & editing. Salman A. AlQahtani:
Writing - review & editing. Mohammad Mehedi Hassan: Writing -
review & editing.
M.R. Palas, M.R. Islam, P. Roy et al.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to
influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
The work is supported by the Deanship of Scientific Research at
King Saud University, Saudi Arabia through the Vice Deanship of
Scientific Research Chairs: Chair of Pervasive and Mobile Computing.
This work is also partially supported by a grant for the ‘‘Research Fel-
lowship (2020–2021)’’ funded by the Information and Communication
Technology Division, Ministry of Telecommunications and Information
Technology, Government of Bangladesh.
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