A Unified Stochastic Model of Handover Measurement in Mobile Networks

Handover measurement is responsible for finding a handover target and directly decides the performance of mobility management. It is governed by a complex combination of parameters dealing with multicell scenarios and system dynamics. A network design has to offer an appropriate handover measurement procedure in such a multiconstraint problem. This paper proposes a unified framework for the network analysis and optimization. The exposition focuses on the stochastic modeling and addresses its key probabilistic events, namely: suitable handover target found; service failure; handover measurement triggering; and handover measurement withdrawal. We derive their closed-form expressions and provide a generalized setup for the analysis of handover measurement failure and target cell quality by the best signal quality and level crossing properties. Finally, we show its application and effectiveness in today's 3GPP-LTE cellular networks.