1

EENG 6014, Advanced

Telecommunications Engineering

7. Mobility and Handover

Management in Mobile Networks

Yihenew Wondie (Dr. Eng.)

May, 2016
AAiT
 Outline
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 Mobility Management in Circuit Switched Communication

Networks
 Mobility Management in Packet Switched Communication
Networks
 Mobility Management in All-IP Networks
 Handoff Management
 3

MOBILITY MANAGEMENT IN CIRCUIT-

SWITCHED COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
 Location Management
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Location update Call delivery

 Network Service Area in 2G Systems
5
 Location Update and Terminal Paging
6

 Location update schemes

 Dynamic LA management
 Three dynamic update schemes
 Time-based
 Movement-based
 Distance-based

 Terminal paging schemes

 Paging under delay constraints
 Update and paging under delay constraints
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MOBILITY MANAGEMENT IN PACKET-

SWITCHED COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
 Mobile Station State
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 In circuit-based communication networks

 MT is in idle or busy state
 In packet-based communication networks
 MS is in Idle, ready, or standby state in GPRS
 UE is in PMM-detached, PMM-idle, cell-connected, or URA-
connected state in UMTS
 Cell, URA, RA, or LA is the unit area for location
update
 Frequency of location update and paging depend
on the state of MS or UE
 Effect of timer (i.e. ready timer, inactivity timer, etc.)
is important
 Network Service Area in GPRS
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 GPRS MS State Model
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 Idle
 MS is not reachable

 After attach, the MS moves to

ready state
 Ready
 Packet transmission is possible

 Cell-based location update is

performed
 Ready state can be sub-divided
into ready(off) and ready(on)
 Standby
 RA-based location update is
performed
 Combined Mobility Management
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 Implicit cell update

 The location of MS is known to network if GSM MS is in
busy state
 After the implicit cell update, paging only one cell may
be sufficient for call or packet delivery if the cell
location is managed
 A new MS state model
 Incorporation of GSM MS state into GPRS MS state
 12

MOBILITY MANAGEMENT IN ALL-IP NETWORKS

 Micro-Mobility Protocols
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 Cellular IP
 HAWAII
 Regional registration
 Hierarchical Mobile IP
 Fast handoff
 IP Paging
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 Consider an MH, which is moving fast and is not involved in a

communication
 Bandwidth consumption
 Processing power
 Protocol states
 Optimization for nodes that are currently not in a session might be taken
into consideration
 Entering dormant mode
 Avoids frequent location update
 Decreases the preciseness of the network’s knowledge about individual mobile’s
location to paging areas
 Dormant mode supports
 saving scarce radio bandwidth
 cutting superfluous location updating
 reducing battery energy drainage
 Handoff Management
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 This discussion is general, which applies to both

high-tier cellular systems and low-tier pedestrian
systems, in both indoor and outdoor environments.
 Handoff
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 Coverage areas
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 The coverage areas are irregular because

 the radiation pattern of the base station antennas,
 buildings, trees, mountains, and other terrain features.
 Adjacent coverage areas may overlap considerably.
 Some overlap is desired because handoff is required
in mobile communications systems when an MS
moves from one BS coverage area to another during
the course of a conversation.
 Handoff
18

 The handoff procedure should be completed while

the MS is in the overlap region.
 As the MS moves toward the edge of the BS coverage, the
signal strength and quality begin to deteriorate.
 The signal from a neighboring BS (the new BS) becomes
stronger than the signal from the serving BS (the old BS).
 Additionally, the new BS receives a stronger signal from
the MS than that received by the old BS.
 The conversation needs to be handed over to the new
BS before the link between the old BS and the MS
becomes unusable. Otherwise, the call is lost.
 Handoff management
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 Three issues need to be considered for handoff

management:
 Handoff detection
 Channel assignment

 Radio link transfer

 Handoff Detection
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 Handoff detection is based on radio link

measurement.
 determines the need for handoff and the target or new
channel for transfer.
 The propagation between the base station and the MS is
made up of
 the direct line-of-sight path and
 scattering paths caused by reflections from or diffraction around
buildings and terrain.
 Thus, the signal received by the MS at any point consists
of a large number of generally horizontally traveling
uniform plane waves.
 Handoff Detection
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 The plane wave amplitudes, phases, and angles of

arrival relative to the direction of motion are random.
 These plane waves interfere and produce a varying
field strength pattern with minima and maxima
spacing of the order of a quarter-wavelength apart.
 The MS's received signal fades rapidly and deeply as
it moves through this interference pattern.
 By reciprocity, the BS receiver experiences the same
phenomenon as the MS due to the MS motion.
 The envelope process of this fast-fading phenomenon
is Rayleigh-distributed if there is no strong line-of-
sight component, and Rician otherwise.
 Shadow Fading
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 As the MS moves, different scatterers and terrain change the

plane waves incident on the MS antenna.
 Therefore, superimposed on the rapid multi-path fading are
slow variations in the average field strength of the
interference pattern due to these new reflection and
diffraction paths.
 This slower fading phenomenon is called shadow fading,
which has a lognormal distribution.
 Quality of a channel
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 Three measurements are used to determine the quality of a

channel:
 Word error indicator (WEI). Metric that indicates whether the current
burst was demodulated properly in the MS.
 Received signal strength indication (RSSI) Measure of received
signal strength. The RSSI metric has a large useful dynamic range,
typically between 80 to 100 dB.
 Quality indicator (QI). Estimate of the "eye opening" of a radio
signal, which relates to the signal to interference and noise (S/I) ratio,
including the effects of dispersion. QI has a narrow range (relating to
the range of S/I ratio from 5 dB to perhaps 25 dB).
 Handoff Detection
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 Handoff may depend more reliably on WEI of the

current channel rather than RSSI.
 If WEI is good, then handoff is not performed.
 However, it is necessary to accumulate WEI
measurements over a period of time, whereas RSSI
is known instantaneously.
 To make the handoff decision accurately and quickly,
it is desirable to use both WEI and RSSI.
 Handoff Detection
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 RSSI measurements are affected by distance-

dependent fading, lognormal fading (i.e., shadow
fading), and Rayleigh fading (i.e., multipath fading).
 Distance-dependent fading, or path loss, occurs when the
received signal becomes weaker due to increasing
distance between MS and BS.
 Shadow fading occurs when there are physical obstacles
(e.g., hills, towers, and buildings) between the BS and the
MS, which can decrease the received signal strength.
 Multipath fading occurs when two or more transmission
paths exist (due to signal being reflected off buildings or
mountains) between the MS and BS.
 Multipath fading
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 There are two types of multipath fading:

 Rayleigh fading occurs when the obstacles are close to the
receiving antenna;
 in time dispersion, the reflected signal comes from an
object far away from the receiving antenna.
 Ideally, the handoff decision should be based on
distance-dependent fading and, to some extent, on
shadow fading.
 The handoff decision is independent of Rayleigh
fading.
27

 This can be accomplished by averaging the

received signal strength for a sufficient time
period.
 The problem is that besides transmitting and receiving the
desired signals for the communication link, the MS must
also measure or sample all frequencies in the band of interest
to find a suitable handoff candidate.
 Handoff and performance
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 Handoffs are expensive to execute, so unnecessary handoffs

should be avoided.
 If the handoff criteria are not chosen appropriately, then in
the overlapping region between the two BS coverage area
boundaries, the call might be handed back and forth several
times between them.
 If the criteria are too conservative, then the call may be lost
before the handoff can take place.
 The handoff decision-making criteria become even more
critical with the evolution to smaller cell sizes, which is
happening to increase the capacity of systems and to reduce
power requirements of MSs.
 Unreliable and inefficient handoff procedures will reduce the
quality and reliability of the system.
 TDMA system:
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 Depending on the radio system's TDMA frame structure and

duration, it may take 100 to 500 msec to measure all possible
frequency channels.
 Maintaining a short list of the best candidate channels is a
reasonable alternative since the number of measurements of
the most likely candidate BSs can be increased.
 Therefore, the decision will need to be based on a sum of
instantaneous power measurements, which can thus average
out the Rayleigh fading.
 Channel comparison
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 Channel comparisons for handoff are based on RSSI and QI

metrics.
 Since the multi-path environment tends to make the RSSI
and QI metrics vary widely in the short term, and since it is
preferable not to perform handoff to mitigate brief multipath
fades because these fades are nonreciprocal, and because
such handoffs could cause unnecessary load on the network,
the MS should average or filter these measurements before
using them to make decisions.
 TDMA system：the speed of the measurement process
depends on the frame structure of the radio system.
 This capability can be used to visit each frequency channel
in turn. The measurements obtained in this process are used
to maintain an ordered list of channels as candidates for
handoff.
 Filtering
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 Filtering should be applied to both RSSI and QI

measurements.
 At least two filtering methods are possible:
 window averaging
 leaky-bucket integration.
 Handoff Detection
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 Three handoff detection strategies

 mobile-controlled handoff (MCHO)
 network-controlled handoff (NCHO).
 mobile-assisted handoff (MAHO).
 The evolution of mobile communications is toward
decentralization, implying that both the management
and setup of handoff procedures will be partially
entrusted to the MS.
 Thus, advanced mobile systems typically follow
MAHO.
 Mobile-Controlled Handoff (MCHO)
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 The MS continuously monitors the signal strength

and quality from the accessed BS and several
handoff candidate BSs.
 When some handoff criteria are met, the MS
checks the "best" candidate BS for an available
traffic channel and launches a handoff request.
 MCHO
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 The combined control of automatic link transfer

(ALT, handoff between two BSs) and time slot
transfer (TST, handoff between channels on the same
BS) by the MS is considered desirable.
 Advantages:
 Offload the handoff task from the network
 Ensure robustness of the radio link by allowing
reconnection of calls even when radio channels suddenly
become poor
 Control both automatic link transfer and time slot transfer,
thus preventing unhelpful, simultaneous triggering of the
two processes
 ALT
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 Automatic link transfer control requires the MS to

make quality measurements of the current and
candidate channels in the surrounding BSs.
 The MS's handoff control between channels on the
same BS is made possible by passing uplink-
quality information, in the form of a word-error
indicator (WEI), back to the MS on the downlink.
 Network-Controlled Handoff (NCHO)
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 The BS monitors the signal strength and quality from the

MS. When these deteriorate below some threshold, the
network arranges for a handoff to another BS.
 The network asks all surrounding BSs to monitor the signal
from the MS and report the measurement results back to the
network.
 The network then chooses a new BS for the handoff and
informs both the MS (through the old BS) and the new BS.
The handoff is then effected.
 NCHO
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 The BSs supervise the quality of all current connections by
making measurements of RSSI.
 The mobile switching center (MSC) will command
surrounding BSs to occasionally make measurements of these
links. Based on these measurements, the MSC makes the
decision when and where to effect the handoff.
 Because of heavy network signaling traffic needed to collect
the information, and the lack of adequate radio resources at
BSs to make frequent measurements of neighboring links, the
handoff execution time is in the order of seconds.
 Since measurements cannot be made very often, the accuracy
is reduced.
 To reduce the signaling load in the network, neighboring BSs
do not send measurement reports continuously back to the
MSC; therefore, comparisons cannot be made before the actual
RSSI is below a predetermined threshold. The required handoff
time for NCHO can be up to 10 seconds or more.
 Mobile-Assisted Handoff MAHO
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 MAHO is a variant of network-controlled

handoff whereby the network asks the MS to
measure the signals from surrounding BSs and
report those measurements back to the old BS
so that the network can decide whether a
handoff is required, and to which BS.
 high-tier GSM, IS-95 CDMA, and IS-136
TDMA standards; it is not used by any of the
low-tier PCS standards.
 MAHO
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 In MAHO, the handoff process is more decentralized.

 Both the MS and the BS supervise the quality of the link, for
example, the RSSI and WEI values. RSSI measurements of
neighboring BSs are done by the MS.
 In GSM, the MS transmits the measurement results to the BS
twice a second.
 The decision as to when and where to execute the handoff is
still made by the network, that is, the BS and the MSC or BSC.
 The GSM handoff execution time is approximately 1 second.
 In both MAHO and NCHO systems, network signaling is
required to inform the MS about the handoff decision made by
the network-that is, on which new channel to begin
communicating is transmitted on the failing link.
 There is some probability that the link will fail before this
information can be transmitted to the MS; in this case, the call
will be forced to terminate.
 Handoff Failures
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 The reason of handoff failures

 No channel is available on selected BS.
 Handoff is denied by the network for reasons such as lack
of resources. For example, no bridge or no suitable
channel card; the MS has exceeded some limit on the
number of handoffs that may be attempted in some period
of time.
 It takes the network too long to set up the handoff after it
has been initiated.
 The target link fails in some way during the execution of
handoff.
 Channel Assignment
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 Channel assignment schemes attempt to achieve a

high degree of spectrum utilization for a given grade
of service with the least number of database lookups
and the simplest algorithm employed in both the MS
and the network.
 Some trade-offs occur when trying to accomplish the
following goals:
 Service quality
 Implementation complexity of the channel assignment
algorithm
 Number of database lookups
 Spectrum utilization
 Channel Assignment
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 Handoff requests and initial access requests compete for

radio resources.
 At a busy BS, call attempts that fail because there are
no available channels are called blocked calls.
 Handoff requests for existing calls that must be turned
down because there are no available channels are called
forced terminations.
 It is generally believed that forced terminations are less
desirable than blocked call attempts.
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 Note that the successful handoff access is intimately

tied to the radio technology of the channel
assignment process, which may be
 dynamic channel assignment (DCA),
 fixed channel assignment (FCA),
 quasi-static autonomous frequency assignment (QSAFA),
or
 some other fixed, flexible, or dynamic process.

 Several channel assignment strategies have been

developed to reduce forced terminations at the cost
of increasing the number of lost or blocked calls.
 Handoff-initial-access channel assignment
schemes
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 handoff-initial-access channel assignment schemes

 the non-prioritized scheme,
 the reserved channel scheme,

 the queuing priority scheme, and

 the sub-rating scheme

 Non-prioritized Scheme and the Reserved
Channel Scheme
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 non-prioritized scheme (NPS)

 the BS handles a handoff call in exactly the same
manner as a new call; that is, the handoff call is blocked
immediately if no channel is available.
 This scheme is employed by most PCS radio
technologies.
 Reserved Channel Scheme (RCS)
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 The reserved channel scheme (RCS) is similar to

NPS except that a number of channels or
transceivers in each BS are reserved for handoffs.
 In other words, the channels are divided into two
groups:
 the normal channels, which serve both new calls and
handoff calls,
 the reserved channels, which only serve handoff calls.
 Queuing Priority Scheme
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 The queuing priority scheme (QPS) is based on

the fact that adjacent cells in a PCS network
overlap.
 Thus, there is a considerable area where a call
can be handled by either BS of the adjacent
cells, called the handoff area.
 The time that an MS spends in the overlapped
area is referred to as the degradation interval.
 QPS
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 The channel assignment for a QPS new call is the same as

that for NPS.
 If a channel in the new cell is available for the handoff, the
handoff actually occurs.
 If no channel is available after the MS moves out of the
handoff area-the degradation interval expires-the call is
forced to terminate.
 In this scheme, when a channel is released, the BS first
checks if the waiting queue is empty.
 If not, the released channel is assigned to a handoff call in
the queue.
 The next handoff to be served is selected based on the
queuing policy.
 Sub-rating Scheme
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 The sub-rating scheme (SRS) creates a new

channel on a blocked BS for a handoff access
attempt by subrating an existing call.
 Subrating is the process of temporarily dividing an
occupied full-rate channel into two channels at half
the original rate, one to serve the existing call and
the other to serve the handoff request.
 Sub-rating Scheme
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 Furthermore, a mechanism is required to subrate an

existing (e.g., 32 Kbps) call to free up an additional
(e.g., 16 Kbps) channel for the handoff access
request.
 There may be some calls for which it is
inappropriate to subrate the channel.
 Implementation Issues
51

 To implement prioritizing handoff schemes, a radio system

must have a physical channel, that is, a system signaling
channel, for the MS to request the link transfer even when
all traffic channels are in use. This channel should always
be available, and, therefore, cannot be used as a traffic
channel.
 Some PCS radio systems already reserve a channel for
other purposes, such as system broadcast channel, which
can be shared by the handoff prioritizing procedure.
 For systems with conventional handoff procedures, the
reserved channel is not necessary because the request is
made through the network.
 Implementation Issues…
52

 Several analytical and simulation models have been proposed to

evaluate the performance of the handoff-channel assignment
schemes.
 The results are summarized here. RCS is easy to implement,
and it reduces the forced termination probability more
effectively than NPS.
 The new call-blocking probability for RCS, however, is larger
than that of NPS.
 Thus, RCS is desirable only when reducing forced termination
is much more important than reducing new call blocking.
 The queuing priority schemes take advantage of the handoff
area to buffer the handoff calls.
 Implementation Issues…
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 Queuing priority schemes effectively reduce forced

terminations, at the expense of increased new call
blocking.
 Queuing priority schemes add hardware /software
complexity for both BSs and MSs to manage the waiting
queues.
 The sub rating scheme has the least forced termination
probability and the probability of incomplete calls when
compared with the other schemes.
 This benefit is gained at the expense of the extra hardware/
software complexity required to sub rate a channel.
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