An Efficient Handover Measurement Technique for Millimeter-Wave Cellular Communications

Abstract

An efficient handover measurement technique is proposed for millimeter-wave (mm-wave) cellular systems with directional antenna beams. As the beam synchronization signal (BSS) carries the cell ID and the beam ID in a hierarchal manner, handover events (interbeam handover and intercell handover) are distinguished at the physical layer. The proposed signal metrics are shown to be effective in detecting the beam boundaries and cell boundaries in mm-wave cellular systems, which allows to distinguish interbeam handover from intercell handover. The proposed handover measurement technique is shown to reduce the processing time significantly using the proposed signal metrics produced by the BSS.