2014 2nd International Conference on Information and Communication Technology (ICoICT)

Evaluation of X2-Handover Performance Based on

RSRP Measurement with Friis Path Loss Using
Network Simulator version 3 (NS-3)
MuhamadAssyadzily, Antonius Suhartomo, Arthur Silitonga
Department of Electrical Engineering
President University
Bekasi, Indonesia
m.assyadzili@gmail.com
Comparing to UMTS network, the LTE only uses packet
switched domain which makes the architecture simpler than the
UMTS, hence the latency will be lower. The architecture of
LTE comprise of elements, which are evolved node B
(eNodeB), serving gateway (S-GW), packet data network
gateway (P-GW), home subscriber service (HSS), mobility
management entity (MME), and policy and charging rule
function (PCRF).
The eNodeB manages all radio functionality on the control
plane as well as the user plane. S-GW and P-GW are
responsible as a router between user with the network and the
outside network respectively. HSS is used as a database which
holds subscriber information. MME manages the mobility
functionality between user and network such as tracking the
location of user equipment (UE). PCRF is resided in PGW
which performs managing and controlling data session, for
example Voice over IP (VoIP), the PCRF will initiate the
dedicated bearer.
The LTE system uses also protocol stack, particularly in EUTRAN. Protocol stack is associated with the interface, hence
each network element can exchanging the data and signaling
message. In LTE, protocol has two plane; User plane and
Control plane. User plane handles data which interest to the
UE, while Control plane handles signaling message which
related to the network elements.
Protocol stack also comprise of two layers, which are
Transport network layer and Radio network layer (user plane
and control plane). Transport network layer is used to transport
information and signaling message from one point to another
point. For the air interface, the LTE system has two level
interfaces which are No-Access Stratum (NAS) and Access
Stratum (AS) as shown in following figure:

AbstractLong term evolution (LTE) is the next generation

after UMTS system which developed by 3GPP release 8. LTE as
the fourth generation provides a high transmission speed and
high mobility to the user. In this paper we concern about the
mobility performance. In order to see the mobility performance,
handover scenario is chosen. Handover scenario is based on lenax2-handover-measure script which provided in network
simulator (ns-3). The ns-3 is used to simulate the x2-handover
using lena-x2-handover-measure. Lena-x2-handover-measure
instantiates one UE attached to serving eNodeB and moves
toward neighbor eNodeB. The focus is on the impact of A2 and
A4 event based on measurement report known as reference
signal receive power (RSRP) and reference signal receive quality
(RSRQ) on x2-handover performance in different parameters
such as velocity, distance and eNodeB transmitted power.
Receive power is calculated using Friis path loss equation and
later it will be compared with the simulation result. .
IndexTermsLTE; X2-Handover; RSRP; RSRQ; Friis path
loss; ns-3

I. INTRODUCTION
Sometimes, when you are browsing internet in your
car/bus, the internet is slower or even disconnect because 3G
networks coverage cannot cover maximally while you are
moving at high speed. Technically, this problem happened
because the handover/hand-off is failure. LTE as the next
generation provides a lot of features such as a very high data
speed and low transfer delay which allow the user to use many
application simultaneously without any disconnection and
buffering although the user moves with very high speed
movement.
LTE is the fourth generation after UMTS (3G) network,
which developed by the third generation partnership project
(3GPP) release 8. LTE provides a higher transmission speed up
to 100 Mbps in the downlink and 75 Mbps in the uplink using
orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) and
single carrier frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA)
technique respectively. By integrating it with multiple inputs
and multiple outputs (MIMO) technology, LTE can achieve
300 Mbps throughput.

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The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In section II,

we present introduction to ns-3 with some theories of x2handover, measurement report (RSRP and RSRQ), and Friis
path loss model. In section III, there will be a brief explanation
about simulation design, how the configuration and
environment are. In section IV, we discuss the performance of
x2-handover in ns-3 and the impact of those parameters with
RSRP and RSRQ. In section V, about conclusion and future
work recommendation.

Fig.1. Non access stratum and Access stratum (green)

Air interface is divided into two levels because there is no
direct path between UE and MME. The signaling message
between UE and MME uses Non-Access stratum, and
transported using access stratum protocol of LTE-Uu and S1
interfaces. In order to transport data between UE and eNodeB,
they use LTE-Uu interface. LTE-Uu is one of air interface
transport protocol. The air interface transport protocol uses 2
layers of OSI model, which are physical layer and data link
layer that comprises of MAC, RLC and PDCP.
When the UE moves with a high speed, it need also high
data speed so that the data can arrive in time manner. This
mechanism should be handled by the protocols. In case of
doing x2-handover, x2 application (X2-AP) takes an important
role. The X2 interface of control plane is used in handover
procedure, particularly to prepare and perform handover. In the
other side, X2-user plane is required for downlink data
forwarding when handover happened. Forwarding means that
the data will be sent to UE while UE moves to the target
eNodeB. Besides protocol, UE also gives a big contribution in
handover process, because in handover there is measurements
process that should be taken by UE before handover decision
made by eNodeB. The measurements are known as reference
signal receive power (RSRP) and reference signal receive
quality (RSRQ). The RSRP and RSRQ are measured when UE
is going to move to another BTS, i.e. these measurement
measures for serving and neighbor eNodeB. When these
measurements meet the criteria (see table I) for making
handover, then serving eNodeB will trigger handover. In this
case we only consider A2 and A4 event to trigger handover.

II. LITERATURE REVIEW

A. Introduction to ns- 3
NS - 3 is an acronym for Network Simulator Version 3. Ns3 is free software with GNU-GPL license version 2. As the
name implies, NS-3 is used to create network simulation or to
display communication network. NS-3 can be used for the
purpose of research, and education. Ns-3 is a discrete-event
network simulator which uses phyton and c++ programming
language to create a program.
B. X2-Handover
Handover is a process in which UE moves from one
eNodeB to another eNodeB. In LTE, there are two handovers;
S1-handover and X2-handover. This paper focuses on x2handover. Basically x2-handover is nearly the same as normal
handover in UMTS. However x2-handover performs handover
via X2-interface, no need RNC since its functionality has
merged within eNodeB. Because handover in LTE is hard
handover, the connection of UE to source eNodeB has to be
disconnected before air interface to target eNodeB established
[2].
Moreover, in x2-handover, the radio handover does not
involve the others components except eNodeB, hence the
MME and SGW are not aware that handover has successful
because SGW focus on forwarding data to source eNodeB in
order to prevent packet loss, while the MME focus on its
responsible to change the path of UE from serving eNodeB to
the neighbor eNodeB.
In ns-3, x2-handover has already built, namely LENA
module. LENA is abbreviation of LTE-EPC Network
simulAtion. LENA module provides two scripts example of
x2-handover, which are lena-x2-handover and lena-x2handover-measure. As the explanation in abstract, lena-x2handover-measure is chosen. In lena-x2-handover-measure, x2
interface that used to attach serving eNodeB to the neighbor
eNodeB is implemented by point to point (p2p) link [3] i.e.
using IP address. The point to point link is attached by p2p
device in order to send and receive X2 messages between
eNodeBs through control plane and user plane of X2 protocol
interface.

TABLEI. Events and triggering conditions [1]

Event
A1
A2
A3
A4
A5

Triggering Condition
Serving becomes better than threshold
Serving becomes worse than threshold
Neighbor becomes offset better than
serving
Neighbor becomes better than threshold
Serving becomes worse than threshold1and
neighbor becomes better than threshold2

In addition, the propagation loss used in this paper is Friis

path loss model. Propagation loss should be concern in order to
prevent a failure handover. Some parameters such as distance,
velocity and eNB transmitted power will affect the handover
result by impacting those measurements. It could be happened
since they have relation with the propagation loss that we used.
In this paper, we used ns-3 to evaluate the x2-handover

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C. RSRP and RSRQ

RSRP and RSRQ are two types of measurement in LTE.
These measurements are defined in 3GPP [4]. In LTE system,
there are two kinds of measurements. The measurements
measure the signal power and the signal quality. The signal
power is known as RSRP, while the signal quality is RSRQ.

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RSRP is abbreviation of reference signal received power,

while RSRQ is reference signal received quality. RSRP is
reported by PHY layer in dBm while RSRQ in dB.These
measurements are performed by the UE when UE want to
move from one eNodeB to another eNodeB, known as
handover. During the movement process, UE measures the
reference signal from serving eNodeB and neighbor eNodeB.
The UE will send the measurement report back to the serving
eNodeB jointly with the physical cell identity (PCI) of the
cell. PCI is obtained with the Primary Synchronization Signal
(PSS). The PSS is sent by the eNB each 5 sub frames and in
detail in the sub frames 1 and 6. The report is used by the
eNodeB to determine when handover should be triggered so
that UE can move to the neighbor eNodeB. Theoretically
RSRP is reference signal receive power. RSRP is a RSSI type
of measurement. It measures the average received power over
the resource elements that carry cell-specific (RNTI) reference
signals (RS) within certain frequency bandwidth. RSRQ is a
C/I type of measurement and it indicates the quality of the
received reference signal. It is defined as

III. SIMULATION DESIGN

A. Design Environment
LTE has already modeled within the simulator called
LENA module that provides some LTE scripts, one of the
examples is lena-x2-handover-measures.Lena-x2-handovermeausre is an automatic X2-based handover based on the
measurement which performed by UE.
This program instantiates two eNodeB, attaches one UE to
the serving eNodeB as illustrated in figure:

(1)

Fig.2. X2-Handover topology

The UE moves between both eNodeBs with constant

velocity 20 m/s. While UE is moving, it measures RSRP and
RSRQ and send them back to the serving eNodeB. Based on
the measurement report, the serving eNodeB will send
handover request to the neighbor eNodeB when the
measurement report of neighbor eNodeB consider as better
than serving eNodeB. The distance (d) between UE, serving
eNodeB and neighbor eNodeB is 1000 m, hence the total path
that UE should be taken is 3000 m and the duration of
simulation is about 150 second.

The carrier RSSI (Receive Strength Signal Indicator)

measures the average total received power observed only in
OFDM symbols containing reference symbols for antenna port
0 (i.e., OFDM symbol 0 & 4 in a slot) in the measurement
bandwidth over N resource blocks. The total received power
of the carrier RSSI includes the power from co-channel
serving & non-serving cells, adjacent channel interference,
thermal noise, etc. The RSRQ measurement provides
additional information when RSRP is not sufficient to make a
reliable handover or cell re-selection decision. In the
procedure of handover, the LTE specification provides the
flexibility of using RSRP, RSRQ, or both.

B. Tools and Softwares

For the tools, we use Computer or laptop which can be
installed the ns-3 and Ubuntu operating system. In this case
we use Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. For the software, we need ns-3,
netanim, and microsoft excel. Network Simulator version
3we use ns-3 version 3.18 which was release on april
2013.Network Animator (NetAnim).Network animator is used
to display animation result based on xml trace file as well as
display handover request time. Microsoft Excel 2010 is used
to make a graph based on simulation result, particularly RSRP
and RSRQ values.

D. Friis Path loss

In wireless communication, there are multipath and fading.
Multipath happened when there is a signal which reflects in
some different paths from the transmitter to the receiver. This
phenomenon can make the received signal good if it is
constructive or bad otherwise. Bad received signal occurred
because of destructive interference which can make a fading
[5]. Fading is a situation where the signal power drops to a
very low level. When the UE moves, then the path of signal
changes, so that the interference will change also the fading
level as a function of time. As a consequence, the receive
signal will be lower than transmitted signal, called path loss.
Propagation loss or path loss can be calculated by dividing
received power with transmitted power. Friis propagation
model provides equation to find out that propagation loss, as
shown follow

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C. Changing some parameters

In this simulation, there are three parameters (velocity,
distance, and eNodeB transmitted power) that want to be
change in order to see the relation between those parameters
with the RSRP and RSRQ.
IV. SIMULATION RESULTS
We have evaluated x2-handover in ns-3. We studied the
performance of x2-handover throughout network animator
(NetAnim). NetAnim used to display the simulation result in
animation. The result of simulation is plotted using GNU-Plot
and Microsoft Excel 2010.

(2)

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According to table 3, x2-handover in ns-3 is done in 4

modes. The first mode is idle mode (yellow color), the second
is connected mode (green), the third is handover execution
(blue), and the last is handover complete/success (orange). For
your information, in this simulation, the velocity is increased
by 10, which means 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 and 100 m/s. In
this case the speed of UE is 30 m/s. For the other cases, they
performed similar when UE speed is 30 m/s, the different is
about the time in blue and orange color. For the others
scenario (distance and eNB transmitted power). The results
are the same, except the time for handover execution and
handover success. In addition, to get more understanding
about x2-handover in ns-3, we used NetAnim to show the
animation as shown in following figure:

The simulation parameters are summarized in Table II:

TABLE II. Handover Simulation Parameters
Value
Parameter
Frequency
2100 MHz
2120 MHz
Downlink frequency
Uplink frequency

1930 MHz

DL EARFCN

18100

UL EARFCN

100

Channel bandwidth (BW)

5 MHz

Measurement BW

25RB

Thermal noise(kT)

-174

Noise power RE
System Loss
eNBTx power
eNB noise figure
UE Tx power

-122.24
1
20 dBm
5
10 dBm

UE noise figure

Antenna mode

SISO

Gain

0 dBi

Transmission mode

FDD

Path loss

Friismodel

Fig.3. X2-Handover animation using NetAnim

Hysteresis

Time to trigger

Serving cell HO threshold

30

There are three nodes in red colors. The first one is serving
eNodeB node which located at 1000 m from UE. The middle
one is UE node and the last one is neighbor eNodeB which is
located at 2000 m from UE. Besides that, figure3 shows the
handover request time from serving cell to neighbor cell. The
time request happen at 50.6 seconds, which means the UE, is
going to handover at 1518 m or 518 m far away from the
source eNodeB. For more detail, see the following figure:

Neighbor cell HO offset

Handover event

1
A2 and A4

A. X2-handover performance
From the simulation result in terminal, the x2-handover
performed in 9steps as shown in table below:
TABLE III. X2-Handover Procedure
Time (s)
0
0.016
0.016
0.0202143
0.0202143
51.24
51.24
51.2442
51.2442

Condition of handover process

IMSI 1 RNTI 0
UeRrcIdle_cell_selectionIdle_wait_system_info
IMSI 1 RNTI 0
UeRrcIdle_wait_sytem_infoidle_camped_normally
IMSI 1 RNTI 0
UeRrcIdle_camped_normallyIdle_random_access
UE IMSI 1: connected to CellId 1 with RNTI 1
eNBCellId 1: successful connection of UE with
IMSI 1 RNTI 1
eNBCellId 1: start handover of UE with IMSI 1
RNTI 1 to CellId 2
UE IMSI 1:previously connected to CellId 1 with
RNTI 1, doing handover to CellId 2
UE IMSI 1: successful handover to CellId 2 with
RNTI 1
eNBCellId 2: completed handover of UE with IMSI
1 RNTI 1

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Fig.4. Handover occurred when velocity is 30 m/s

In Fig.4, there are two lines which indicate the values of

serving and neighbor cells reference signal receive power
(RSRP). Both lines look similar but actually different. The
different is just about time. If the reader sees from the figure,
the blue line starts with higher RSRP value rather than the
orange one. It means that the blue line is possessed by serving
while the orange is belongs to neighbor eNodeB. The reason

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why the graphs look identical, it is because serving eNodeB

and neighbor eNOdeB use the same transmitted power, which
is 20 dBm. In addition, handover request occur with the RSRP
values which are -97.9745 dBm (serving cell) and -97.4558
dBm (neighbor cell) as well as the RSRQ values, which are 6.29387 dB and -5.77516 respectively. Again, for the other
cases and scenario (distance and eNB transmitted power), they
performed similar when UE speed is 30 m/s, the different is
about the time to request handover and the values of RSRP
and RSRQ.

The simulation results can be seen in figure 5 and 6, which

is the impact of increasing the velocity with RSRP and RSRQ
respectively. RSRP1 belongs to source eNB and RSRP2 to
target eNB as well as the RSRQ1 (source) and RSRQ2
(target). The values of RSRP and RSRQ decreased if the
velocity increased. It means that when the velocity of UE is
slow, it gets a good signal power and quality. In addition, the
figures showed that RSRP and RSRQ got maximum values
whenever UE was located near to eNB.
C. The impact of distance

B. The impact of velocity

Fig.7. RSRP of serving eNB when eNB Tx power changed from 30-100 dBm

Fig.5. Reference Signal Receive Power for all cases (30 100m/s)

Fig.8. RSRQ of serving eNB when eNBTx power changed from 30-100dBm

Figure 7 and 8 showed the graph of RSRP1 and RSRQ

when eNB transmitted power increased from 30 dBm to 100
dBm. If the eNB transmitted power increased, hence the
RSRP and RSRQ increased (but not significant) since RSRQ
express in dB.
RSRP1 means the signal power of serving eNB while the
RSRQ is the signal quality of neighbor eNB. In this case, we
didnt show RSRP2 and RSRQ2 because the graph is nearly
the same. The difference is only about the time, means the
highest value of RSRP of serving eNB achieved at 50 second
while the neighbor at 100 second (since the velocity 20 m/s
and distance to target eNB 2000 m). For the signal quality
(RSRQ) of serving eNB, the maximum value occurred when
the time is 50 second.

Fig.6. RSRQ when velocity is changed from 30-100 m/s

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D. The impact of eNodeB transmitted power

V. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE RECOMMENDATION

From the simulation result, x2-handover is performed in six
steps: Idle mode (UE is doing cell selection), idle to connect
request (eNodeB asked to be attached by UE), connected
mode (UE has connected with serving), connect to handover
(HO) request (UE is going to change the BTS), HO start to
HO success, Connected mode (UE has connect to neighbor
eNodeB). For all scenario, the idle mode and idle to
connecting request happened at 0.016 sec and 0.0202143 sec
respectively. And then the average delay between HO requests
to HO start is 1 second and the delay between starting HO and
HO success is 4 milisecond. In addition, handover occur when
UE is located between serving and neighbor eNodeB.
For the first scenario, the simulation result shows that
RSRP and RSRQ will increase if the velocity decreases,
because according to Friis equation, velocity affects the value
of doppler frequency. The doppler frequency increase as
velocity increase, hence the path loss will be decrease. In
addition, the comparison of RSRP shows that the different
between calculation result and simulation result is very small
only 0.027973984 dBm. For the second scenario, if the
transmitted power increased, then the measurement report also
increased since receive power is proportional to the power
signal. In addition, the comparison of RSRP shows that the
different between calculation result and simulation result is
very small; the error is only 0.021 %. For the third scenario, if
the distance between UE and eNodeB is increased, then RSRP
will be decreased as well as the RSRQ. Because, according to
Friis formula, distance is inversely proportional with the
receive power. In addition, the comparison of RSRP shows that
the different between calculation result and simulation result is
very small; the error is only 0.198 %.
We recommend that there should be at least three events for
x2-handover performance which are A2, A3, and A4 event to
get a better performance result. Moreover, the implementation
of this work can also be done in the future based on the result
of this simulation.

Fig 9. RSRP of serving eNodeB when distance changed from 100-2km

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The project is supported by the department of Electrical
Engineering, President University.
REFERENCES
[1] 3GPPTS 36.331, Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access
(E-UTRA); Radio Resource Control (RRC); Protocol
specification, 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), June
2011.
[2] Atte Helenius,Performance of handover in Long Term
Evolution, Masters thesis, Aalto University,
[3] Ns-3 model library, release ns-3.18, August 30, 2013.
[4] 3GPP, TS 36.214, Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access
(E-UTRA); Physical layer; Measurement, 3rd Generation
Partnership Project (3GPP) version 8, September 2007.
[5] Christopher Cox, An Introduction to LTE, LTE-Advanced, SAE
and 4G Mobile Communications, John Wiley and Son Ltd,
2012.

Fig 10. RSRQ of serving eNB when distance changed from 100-2km

Figure 9 and 10 showed the graph of RSRP and RSRQ when

the distance increased by 100 m each case. The RSRP and
RSRQ increased if the distance is decreased.

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