Performance of UMTS Handover by Cell Sectorization Using Opnet Modeller
Abu Sayed Chowdhury
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.
s3191682@student.rmit.edu.au
Abstract
In a cellular system cell sectorization is a common
approach that is used to increase the system capacity.
The capability of a cellular network to perform
efficient handovers is essential to offer attractive
services as real-time applications or streaming media
as planned in third generation networks. Principally
the number of “handover failures” – the situation in
which the handover procedure cannot be completed –
has to be further reduced compared to previous
generation cellular communication systems such as
GSM. In high performance networks where there is a
trend towards the use of smaller cells to increase the
capacity, the handover process becomes even more
important as more frequent handovers are needed. In
this paper, we evaluate the performance of softer and
hard handover procedures provided by UMTS
(Universal Mobile Telecommunication System) applied
to a mobile (UE) while it is near a node with three
sectors (i.e. cells).
1. Introduction
UMTS is one of the main 3G wireless technologies
developed by the European Telecommunications
standard Institute (ETSI) within the IMT – 2000
framework proposed by the ITU [1], [2]. Third
generation wireless systems are intended to provide
advanced global service to the customer either circuit
switched or packet switched; new mobile multimedia
services (e.g. streaming/mobile TV, location base
services, downloads, multi user game and many more)
giving more flexibility for the operator to introduce this
new services to its portfolio and from the user point of
view, more service choices and a variety of higher, on-
Mark Gregory
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.
mark.gregory@rmit.edu.au
demand data rates compared with 2.5-2.75G mobile
systems.
Handover problems of UMTS have been studied
widely by approaching different type of Algorithm to
provide better connection quantity rather then
analyzing performance of different type of handover.
Numerous approaches have been suggested in many
literatures. The study in [3], quality based handover
control algorithms have been proposed to reduce the
number of connections that do not significantly
contribute to the connection quality and the algorithms
take the actual connection quality, i.e. aggregate Ec/Io
into consideration. In UMTS system, instead of using
the aggregate Ec/Io, the handover trigger is based on
the relative strength to the best connection of the
instance by assuming that the best connection has the
most dominated effect on the connection quality [4].
Lately, Adaptive UMTS handover control algorithm
has been proposed to reduce the downlink interference
and then provide better connection quality [5]. To
implement the selective reservation concept for
handover resources an algorithm have been proposed
[6], it can be implemented in UMTS. The study in [7],
authors describe the different type of handover of
UMTS rather than the performance.
In this paper, we attempt to evaluate the
performance of several type of handover by cell
sectorization. The rest of the paper is organized as
follows. Section 2 gives an overview of UMTS
architecture. Section 3 and 4 describes the different
type of handover and analyze the performance of
handover respectively. Finally, in section 5 we draw
some conclusions for this work.
2. UMTS Architecture
UMTS is such an architecture which is not only
associated to a unique radio access technology but also
a predefined set of services [8]. The UMTS
functionality is divided into three groups: User
Equipment (UE), UMTS Terrestrial Radio access
network (UTRAN) and Core network. UTRAN consist
of Node B and Radio Network Controller (RNC). The
Core network comprises two basic nodes: Serving
GPRS Support Node (SGSN) and Gateway GPRS
Support Node (GGSN). GGSN provides interworking
with external packet switched networks such as IP
networks via the Gi interface. UE is connected to
UTRAN over the UMTS Radio interface Uu. Figure 1
shows the system architecture of UMTS for packet-
switched operation.
Figure 1. UMTS Architecture
3. Handover (HO):
Handovers are the fundamental means of providing
mobility in cellular architecture. The reasons for
handover can be various and here are some listed:
1) Signal strength is not enough for maintaining proper
connection at the edge of the cell.
2) BS capacity is full and more traffic is pending.
3) Behavior of MS changes, for example in a case of
fast-moving MS suddenly stopping; a large cell size
can be adjusted to a smaller one with better capacity.
4) Faster or cheaper network is available (if vertical
handovers are supported).
There are criteria should be considered to initiate the
HO operation: a) Signal Quality b) Traffic level c) User
Mobility [9]. In UMTS systems different handover
types have been introduced to manage also with other
requirements as load control, coverage provisioning
and offering quality service. UMTS supports two main
categories of handovers – Soft handover and hard
handover. A soft handover is make-before-break,
whereby communication exists between the UE and
more than one cell for period of time. A hard handover
is break-before-make, whereby communication with the
first cell is terminated before establishing
communication with the second cell. In hard handover
there are more chances to increase the call drop
probabilities rather than the soft handover [10]. The
RNC is responsible about this behavior, so it decides
whether handover to another cell will successful or not
according to information about the radio link quality
and radio resource allocation in the target cell.
Therefore, the handover will fail, if the radio link
quality has decreased before the call can be handed
over, or if there no new resources are available in the
target cell [11].
3.1 Hard Handover:
A hard handover can occur in several situations,
such as from one cell to another where the two cells are
using different carrier frequencies, or from one cell to
another where the base stations are connected to
different RNCs. Hard handover also applied to change
the cell on the same frequency when no network
support of macro diversity exists [12]. Typically hard
handovers are only used for coverage and load reasons,
while soft and softer handover are the main means of
supporting mobility.
Figure 2. Hard handover [7]
3.2 Soft Handover:
A soft handover occurs between two cells or sectors
that are supported by different base stations. In soft
handover the UE is in the overlapping area between
two cells or two sectors which are belonged to different
cells. It has two simultaneous connections to the two
Nodes B using different air interface channels which
connect to same RNC (intra-RNC) or different RNC
(intre-RNC). In downlink, the UE will be received both
signal from two Nodes B; however, in UL, the UE code
channel will be deleted by both Nodes B.
Figure 3. Soft Handover [7]
3.3 Softer Handover:
A softer handover occurs between two cells that are
supported by the same base station. In softer handover
the UE is in the overlapping area between two cells or
two sectors which are belonged to different cells. It has
one connection to the Node B and one connection with
server or workstation on one of the cell. In downlink,
the UE will be received one signal from Node B;
however, in Uplink, the UE code channel will be
detected by one Node B also.
Figure 4. Softer Handover [7]
3.4 Inter/intra-system handover:
Inter-system handover can be classified when the UE
moves among cells belonging to two different radio
access systems. Intra-system handover occurs within
same communication system. Intra-system handover
can be further divided into inter-frequency and intra
frequency handovers. Intra-system handover is realized
as intra-frequency handover and inter frequency
handover. Intra-frequency handover can occurs while
the user is moving between two cells, but the operating
frequency still remains the similar. Inter-frequency
handover can occurs while the UE moves among cells
but the operating frequency changes. Inter-frequency
handover is used in order that to load the balance
among the carriers and extending the coverage area
[13].
Figure 5. Soft and Hard Handover
To analyse soft and hard handover we compare the
performance based on total received throughput in
downlink from UTRAN to UE. Figure 5, presents the
soft handover and hard handover of UMTS. There are
two users UE_0 and UE_1 which belong to the cell 0
and cell 1, are belonged to the same RNC. The UE_0
moves from its cell to cell; however, the UE_1 is
reversely. Figure 6 shows that the throughput in hard
handover will increase directly, however, in soft
handover it will increase slowly because there is more
than one received signal which is one strong and one is
weak.
Figure 6. Total received throughput
4. Cell Sectorization
Sectorization means that a cell is divided into several
sub cells. Almost, all cellular system use sectorization
and it is used in UMTS networks, primarily it’s used to
reduce interference and to increase capacity. If the
radiation pattern of sector is ideal, then a cell with N
sectors should have N times more capacity than a cell
without sectors. However, in practice in the adjacent
real cells the sectors always overlap, so the network
undergoes more interference. Although there is another
way to increase system capacity is by “Cell Splitting”,
sectorizing is less expensive than cell splitting [14].
Expensive cell splitting more likely to be avoided in
LTE (Long term Evaluation) solution due to
significantly less radio resources required rather than
legacy technologies [15].
Figure 8. Sector Softer and Hard Handover
 To analyse the performance of softer handover and
hard handover, we applied to a mobile UE while it is
surrounding a Node B with three sectors. The softer
handover takes place in the overlap area of two
adjutant sectors, which are belonging to the same Node
B and hard handovers take place when the UE is
moving from one sector to another. The UE will have
connection with both sectors simultaneously; in this
type of handover, softer Handover communication
between the UE and the Node B occurs via two radio
links, one for each sector. The signals will be received
in the UE by means of Rake processing; each sector
will use different code for its signal from others sectors'
codes in the downlink, to allow the user to distinguish
between the different received signals from different
sectors; however, in the uplink the user will uses same
code for all the signals transmitted to the different
sectors. On the other hand, the Node B combines the
data from more than one cell to obtain good quality
data from the UE.
Figure 9. Sector Softer Handover
Figure 10. Sector Hard Handover
Figure 9 demonstrates that uplink throughput
received by the Node B in softer HO sectorization, in
period of time when the UE located in the overlapped
area of the two sectors, will receive two uplink
throughputs coming from the same UE. Such as,
between minute 2 to minute 4 both cell 0 and cell 1 is
receiving uplink throughput from the same UE. Figure
10 shows that there is only one uplink throughput at the
time received by the Node B in HHO sectorization.
The user session will examine an instantaneous
disconnection. For example, at 4 minutes, the uplink
throughput of cell 1 decreases to zero; however, the
uplink throughput of cell 0 reaches to its maximum
value which is 3,000.
Figure 11. Average Uplink Tx Power (dbm)
The simulation result represents in figure 11, the
transmission power used by the UE while transmitting
uplink packets over the physical channels the UE in
the Softer Handover scenario uses much less
transmission power reducing the cell interference. On
the other hand during hard handover the UE is taking
more network resources.
9. Conclusion
This research highlights that the handover approach
is an important factor in UMTS network that affects
connection state and QoS. In the presented simulation
results soft handover provides better performance. In
conclusion when the cell is divided into more sectors a
greater number of overlapping regions will occur and
the softer handover approach provides better
performance.
10. References
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[11] 3GPP TS 23.009: Handover Procedures.

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