TY - JOUR

AU - Toril, Matias
AU - Wille, Volker
PY - 2008/01/11
SP - 315
EP - 336
N2 - Cellular network traffic is unevenly distributed both in time and space,
which greatly complicates network dimensioning. As
a result, some cells in the network are permanently congested, while others are
underutilized. In a previous paper, the authors
showed that this problem can be effectively solved in GSM/EDGE Radio Access
Networks (GERAN) by modifying handover boundaries.
However, several drawbacks prevent operators from fully exploiting the potential of
this technique. This paper investigates
the limitations of current traffic-sharing approaches with tight frequency reuses
in GERAN. To deal with such limitations,
an algorithm is proposed to jointly optimize handover margins and signal-level
constraints based on network statistics for
traffic sharing in GERAN. A complementary algorithm is proposed to adjust cell
(re)selection offsets to minimize the number
of handovers. Simulation results show that the proposed method achieves a
significant reduction in call blocking without excessive
call quality impairment or increase of network signaling load when compared to the
current approaches. More traffic can thus
be handled without the need for any hardware upgrades, providing a cost-effective
means to increase network capacity.
T1 - Optimization of Handover Parameters for Traffic Sharing in GERAN
VL - 47
DO - 10.1007/s11277-008-9467-4
JO - Wireless Personal Communications
ER -