Inter-cell handoff performance improvement in LTE-a multi-hop relay networks

Multi-hop relay technology is one of the most promising candidate technologies to overcome the coverage and capacity problem in LTE-Advanced networks. Currently 3GPP is considering the incorporation of multi-hop relays into Release 12 of LTE-A standards. However, many issues remain to be resolved due to the complexity of multi-hop relaying paradigm, specifically resource allocation and mobility management. In this work we focus on the relay selection problem, where a user may have in his range several relay nodes to choose. The conventional selection scheme is based on the channel condition between the relay and the user, such that the user will achieve a high level of throughput. Alternatively we propose in this paper a novel relay selection strategy taking handoff into account over LTE-A multi-hop relay networks. Our goal is to achieve significant performance improvement against legacy centralized resource allocation and handoff algorithms such as disjoint path relay selection. Simulation results show that our design has the advantage of reducing inter-cell handoff frequency and lowering handoff failure ratio.