A Conditional Handover Strategy Based on Trajectory Prediction for High-Speed Terminals in LEO Satellite Networks

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites are expected to be effective complements to terrestrial networks for the global seamless coverage. However, the fast mobility and long propagation delay of LEO satellites lead to the untimely transmission of the hand over signaling and even the radio link failures (RLFs), especially in high-speed terminals scenarios. Thus, we propose a novel conditional handover strategy based on trajectory prediction (PCHO) to eliminate the RLFs. Specifically, we first design a trajectory prediction model based on the gated recurrent unit (GRU) for high-speed terminals. We next optimize the conditional handover (CHO) scheme by utilizing the predicted trajectories of terminals to assist the CHO triggering. Simulation results show that the trajectory prediction model can realize accurate prediction, and the proposed conditional hand over strategy is able to effectively reduce the handover rate and improve the time-of-stay and the signal quality for terminals during handover.