Handover Performance and Power Consumption Analysis of LTE Mobile Relays

Mobile relay node (MRN) is one of the cheaper options for reliable communication when users are moving by public transport (i.e. bus, tram, train, subway, etc.), especially in urban areas. Critically, MRNs need to maintain a backhaul connection with the fixed infrastructure via a donor eNB, (DeNB). If the MRN fails to successfully handover (HO) from one DeNB to another, it will create a single point of failure, i.e. the connection of all UEs connected to MRN will be dropped. In this paper, we address the HO performance of a MRN including a power consumption analysis thereof. We investigate the potential gains in terms of HO rate, HO failure ratio (HOFR), ping-pong (PP) rate and power consumption (both at UE and eNB) when a MRN is deployed on a bus traveling along the cell edges of surrounding macro BSs. We also look over the MRN HO failure cases to identify the causes of HO failures that are more critical for the UEs onboard. Numerical results indicate that deploying a MRN on the roof-top of a bus improves the HO rates 15%, HOFR 8%, PP rate 17%, UE power consumption 21%, and eNB power consumption 14% on average for all simulated cases. We have also established that UL transmission errors are the most dominant causes of turning MRN to a single point of failure during a HO.