Horizontal Soft Handover Management in Cell-Free Massive MIMO Networks

초록

Efficient system performance enhancement and reduction of signaling overhead in Cell-Free (CF) networks can be achieved through the strategic design of horizontal soft handover management. However, in a typical CF environment, Access Points (AP) are often collocated at short distances, posing challenges to the efficient design of horizontal soft handovers. Furthermore, utilizing traditional handover techniques in such scenarios can lead to improper handovers and incorrect AP selection. We propose a horizontal handover technique to help CF networks overcome these challenges. The proposed technique comprises three key components: 1) handover triggering, 2) AP selection, and 3) AP clustering. To minimize scanning delays, the handover triggering mechanism relies on sharing Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI) values among users. Additionally, AP selection and clustering are tailored based on the applications running on the Mobile Node (MN) device. The system is tested across AP distribution scenarios to assess handover delay, throughput, and packet loss. The performance evaluation demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed system, particularly in dense AP environments with varying numbers of MNs.

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