An Effective Hotspot Cell Management Scheme Using Adaptive Handover Time in 4G Mobile Networks

4G 이동 망에서 적응적 핸드오버 시간을 활용한 효과적인 핫스팟 셀 관리 기법

4G mobile networks are expected to support various multimedia services over IP networks and also satisfy high spectral efficiency requirement. In cellular systems including 4G networks, hotspot cells can occur when available wireless resources at some location are not enough to sustain the needs of users. The hotspot cell can potentially lead to blocked and dropped calls, which can deteriorate the service quality for users. In a 4G mobile network, a band of users enjoying multimedia services can move around, which may generate heavy flows of traffic load. This situation can generate the hotspot cell which has a short life span of only a few minutes. In this paper, we propose a handover-based scheme which can effectively manage hotspot cells in 4G mobile networks. With the scheme, the current serving cell can recognize the load status of the target cell in advance before handover execution. Adaptive handover time control according to the amount of traffic load of cells can effectively and flexibly manage the hotspot cell in the network. And, through our hotspot cell management scheme, acceptable service quality can be supported as users continuously maintain connections with the network. In the simulation results, we find that our scheme generates smaller number of hotspot cells and supports higher service quality than the compared schemes.