A stochastic association mechanism for macro-to-femtocell handover

In this paper, we consider a macrocell site underlaid with self-organizing stand-alone femtocells and propose a mechanism for macro-to-femtocell handover, inspired by multi-stage Dutch auctions. The proposed solution introduces a new distributed handover procedure, which does not rely on any centralized coordination typically performed by the macro base stations in existent cellular systems. The applicability of this solution is assessed through system-level simulations using the Monte Carlo approach. When considering the duration of association procedures, results have shown that the distributed mechanism scales well with increasing density of femtocell sites. Additionally, macrocell users benefit from better link quality and less uncoordinated interference generated by the underlay femtocell tier. To illustrate, after performing handover, the co-channel interference experienced by a tagged macrocell user becomes less than one tenth of that in full interference scenario.