  The problem of improving the handover performance in Long Term
Evolution-Advanced (LTE-A) networks has not been fully solved yet.
Traditionally, the selection of the target Evolved Node B (TeNB) in the
handover procedure is based on the signal strength measurements, which may not
produce a reliable handover. A reliable handover method may reduce the
instances of unstable or frequent handovers that otherwise waste network
resources. The signal strength measurement process is inherently time consuming
as the user equipment (UE) has to measure multiple neighboring eNB (NeNB)
frequencies in each measurement period. An efficient handover method is
required to improve the overall performance of such systems. In this paper we
propose a reliable and fast TeNB selection scheme for LTE-A handover. The
proposed scheme outperforms the existing LTE-A handover methods. The improved
performance is achieved by selecting the TeNB based on some three independent
parameters, namely orientation matching (OM), current load (CL), and the
received signal strengths. An UE essentially measures only the NeNBs
shortlisted based on OM and CL; thus measurement time is reduced considerably
leading to a reduction of overall handover time. The performance of the
proposed scheme is validated by simulation.
