Handling Mobility in Dense Networks

Network densification is one of key technologies in future networks to significantly increase network capacity. The gain obtained by network densification for fixed terminals have been studied and proved. However for mobility users, there are a number of issues, such as more frequent handover, packet loss due to high mobility, interference management and so on. The conventional solutions are to handover high speed mobiles to macro base stations or multicast traffic to multiple base stations. These solutions fail to exploit the capacity of dense networks and overuse the backhaul capacity. In this paper we propose a set of solutions to systematically solve the technical challenges of mobile dense networks. We introduce network architecture together with data transmission protocols to support mobile users. A software-defined protocol (SDP) concept is presented so that combinations of transport protocols and physical layer functions can be optimized and triggered on demand. Our solutions can significantly boost performance of dense networks and simplify the packet handling process. Importantly, the gain brought by network densification to fixed users can also be achieved for mobile users.