Mitigation of Redundant Handovers to Femtocells by Estimation of throughput Gain

A deployment of femtocells to mobile wireless networks can increase a throughput of indoor as well as outdoor users. On the other hand, it introduces several problems such as serious interference or high number of performed handovers. This paper is focused on mitigation of redundant handovers to femtocells with open or hybrid access. The redundant handovers decrease user's throughput due to a management overhead and due to introduced interruption. We design a novel handover decision algorithm based on an estimation of throughput gain reached by a handover to a femtocell. In the proposal, the handover is initiated only if the estimated gain in user's throughput exceeds a predefined threshold. As the results indicate, high ratio of eliminated redundant handovers is achieved by the designed procedure. Moreover, a drop in user's throughput due to the handover procedure is reduced by the proposed algorithm and thus the user's throughput is increased.