  The hierarchical macro/femto cell based BWA networks are observed to be quite
promising for mobile operators as it improves their network coverage and
capacity at the outskirt of the macro cell. However, this new technology
introduces increased number of macro/femto handoff and wastage of electrical
energy which in turn may affect the system performance. Users moving with high
velocity or undergoing real-time transmission suffers degraded performance due
to huge number of unnecessary macro/femto handoff. On the other hand, huge
amount of electrical energy is wasted when a femto BS is active in the network
but remains unutilized due to low network load. Our proposed energy efficient
handoff decision algorithm eliminates the unnecessary handoff while balancing
the load of the macro and femto cells at minimal energy consumption. The
performance of the proposed algorithm is analyzed using Continuous Time Markov
Chain (CTMC) Model. In addition, we have also contributed a method to determine
the balanced threshold level of the received signal strength (RSS) from macro
base station (BS). The balanced threshold level provides equal load
distribution of the mobile users to the macro and femto BSs. The balanced
threshold level is evaluated based on the distant location of the femto cells
for small scaled networks. Numerical analysis shows that threshold level above
the balanced threshold results in higher load distribution of the mobile users
to the femto BSs.
