Mobility Optimization for Energy-Efficient 5G Networks : Optimering av Mobilitet för Energieffektiva 5G Nätverk

Abstract: With the upcoming of the fifth generation of cellular networks there are several perfor- mance requirements that need to be satisfied. This thesis focuses on the topic of mobility which allows users to move through the network using the concept of handovers to switch between base stations. However, the thesis also keeps the energy efficiency in mind and investigates a strategy of reducing the energy consumption. Moving across base stations will inevitably lead to some handover failures, a goal of the system developers is to reduce these, but there exists a tradeoff between too early and too late handover failures. This thesis investigates two approaches of lowering the number of failures by letting the net- work self-optimize parameters in the handover procedure based upon the tradeoff. The first approach includes a parameter adaption to an estimated velocity of the users and the second one making a parameter more granular. Simulating different scenarios in a detailed network simulator shows performance gain by adapting handover parameters to the esti- mated velocity, but gathering more data regarding failures is needed before generalizing the conclusions.