Mobile and Wireless Communication

Complete Lecture Notes #4

Lecture # 4
By
Student Lecture Notes
Handoff Strategies
Hand off

“When a mobile moves into a different cell while a conversation is in

progress, MSC transfers the call to a new channel belonging to the new
base station”

Mobile Switching Center needs to:

 Identify the new base station

 Allocate new Voice and Control channels associated with the new base
station
Handoff

Desired behavior:
 Prioritize Handoff requests over call initiation request
 Successful transfer of call
 Hand off should be as infrequent as possible
 Hand off should be imperceptible to the users

Hand off Threshold Power Level

 System designers must specify an optimum signal level at which to initiate
handoff
 There is a minimum power level of the signal at BS for acceptable voice
quality. (-90 to –100 dBm).
 A slightly stronger level is used as a threshold at which handoff is made so
that the system has time to process hand off.

 Margin is given by Δ = P r handoff - P r minimum usable

Handoff

Margin Δ needs to be neither too small, nor too large

 Δ too small → too short time to perform handoff, The call may be dropped
due to weak signal condition

 Δ too large → unnecessary handoff which burden the MSC may occur.
Handoff strategies

Dropped Call Events:

 Dropped call event happen when there is an excessive delay by the MSC in
assigning the handoff or when threshold is too small for handoff time in the
system

 Excessive delays may occur during high traffic conditions due to

computational load on the MSC

 Or no channels available on any of the nearby stations (Forcing the MSC to

wait until a channel in a nearby cell becomes free)
Handoff

Handoff Decision

 Drop in the measured signal level is not due to the momentary fading and that
the mobile is actually moving away from the serving base station.

 Base station monitors the signal strength ensuring necessary handoffs to be

completed before call is terminated due to poor signal level also avoiding
unnecessary handoffs

 Length of time required for decision depend upon on speed at which the
vehicle is moving

 Handoff should be made quickly, for slope of short term avg. received signal
level in a given time interval is steep.
Handoff

Dwell Time
The time over which a call may be maintained within a cell, without
handoff

 Vary greatly depending upon the speed of the user and type of coverage

 Cells providing coverage for vehicular highway users, having relatively

constant speed travel along fixed path with good radio coverage , the dwell
time for a user is random variable with distribution highly concentrated about
the mean dwell time

 For micro cell environments for users in dense there is typically large
variations in dwell time about the mean.
Handoff

Handoff Decision
 In 1G analog cellular system signal strength measurements are made by the
base stations and supervised by the MSC.

 Each base station constantly monitors the signal strength of all of its reverse
channel, determining relative position of the mobile user w.r.t base station
tower

 Locator receiver a spare receiver in base station is used to scan and determine
signal strengths of mobile users in neighbouring cells requiring handoffs and
reports all the RSSI values to the MSC

 Based on locator receiver information MSC decides Handoff is necessary or

not
Handoff

Handoff Decision

 In today's 2G systems handoff decisions are mobile assisted

 Mobile Assisted Handoff (MAHO): Every mobile station measures the received power
from the surrounding base stations and continually reports the result of these
measurements to serving base staion

 A handoff is initiated when the power received from the base station of neighbouring
cell begins to exceed the power received from the current base station by certain level or
for certain period of time

 MAHO is much faster than in 1G system, since measurements are made by mobile (MSC
not monitoring signal strengths), suited for microcell environments
Handoff

Intersystem handoff: During the course of a call if a mobile moves from one
cellular system to a different cellular system controlled by a different MSC

 Necessary when a mobile signal becomes weak in a give cell and MSC cannot
find another cell within its system to which can it transfer the call in progress

 Issues: A local call may become a long distance call (roaming), compatibility
between the two MSC must be determined before implementing intersystem
handoff.
Handoff

 Different policies and methods for managing handoff requests

 Some handle handoff requests in same way as they handle originating calls

 From user point of view call abruptly terminated while in middle of

conversation is more annoying than being blocked on call attempt

 To improve QoS various methods have been devised to prioritize handoff.

Prioritizing Handoffs

Guard Channel Concept

 A fraction of the total available channel in a cell is reserved exclusively for

handoff requests from ongoing calls which may be handed off into the cell

 Disadvantage of reducing the total carried traffic, as fewer channels are

allocated to originating calls

 However offer efficient spectrum utilization using dynamic channel

assignment strategies.
Prioritizing Handoffs

Queuing of handoff requests

 Decrease the probability of forced termination of a call due to lack of available

channels

 Queuing is possible due to the fact that there is finite time interval between the
time the received signal level drops below the handoff threshold and the time
the call is terminated due to insufficient signal level.

 Delay time and size of the queue is determined from the traffic pattern of
particular service area

 Does not guarantee a zero probability of forced termination, since large delays
may occur.
Practical Handoff considerations

Practical Handoff Problem

Wide range of mobile velocities

 High speed vehicles pass through the coverage region of a cell within a matter
of seconds, whereas pedestrians user may never need a handoff during a call

 The addition of microcells to provide capacity, the MSC will be quickly

burdened if high speed users are constantly passed between very small cells
Practical Handoff considerations

Umbrella Cell Approach

 Provide the large area coverage to high speed users while providing the small
coverage area to users travelling at low speeds.
 Minimize handoff for high speed users and provides additional microcell
channels for pedestrian users
 The speed of each user may be estimated by the base station or MSC by
evaluating how rapidly the short term average signal strength on RVC changes
over time.
Practical Handoff considerations

Practical Handoff Problem

Cell Dragging (in microcell systems)
 Results from pedestrian users that provide a very strong signal to the base
station due to LOS radio path between the subscriber and the base station

 Average signal strength does not decay rapidly, due to slow speed

 Even when the user has travelled well beyond the designed range of the cell,
the received signal may be above handoff threshold, handoff may not be made

 Creates a potential interference and traffic management problems

 Handoff threshold and radio coverage parameters must be adjusted carefully.

Practical Handoff considerations

Handoff decisions other than signal strength

 The co-channel and adjacent channel interference levels may be measured at

the base station or mobile.

 Information may be used with the conventional signal strength data to provide
a multidimensional algorithm for determining when handoff is needed.
Practical Handoff considerations

Hard handoff:
Channelized wireless systems assign different radio channels during a handoff

 Spread Spectrum cellular system provide unique handoff capability that cannot
be provided by other cellular system

 Spread spectrum shares the same channel in every cell.

 The term handoff does not mean a physical change in assigned channel, but
rather a different base station handles the radio communication task

Soft Handoff: The ability to select between the instantaneous received signals
from a variety of base stations is called soft handoff.