Ultra-Density Aware Learning-Based Handover Management in High-Mobility 5G Vehicular Networks

Ensuring connection stability is crucial for both vehicular safety and user experience. With the increasing amount of data sharing among connected vehicles, there is a need for more bandwidth, stability, and reliability. While 5G technology can offer these benefits with its small cellular range and densification, it also presents a challenge in frequent handovers (HOs). This issue can result in unnecessary HO, HO failures, and ping-pong effects, negatively impacting service delivery and compromising safety data sharing. To this end, we present High- mobility and Ultra-density Aware Handover decision-making (HMUD-H) approach using the SARSA Reinforcement Learning algorithm for connection management, which efficiently makes HO decisions to ensure stable connectivity. The HMUD-H algorithm is adaptable and can handle dynamic, highly mobile, and ultra-dense vehicular networks. Realistic simulated analyses have demonstrated that our algorithm significantly reduces the number of HOs, average cumulative HO time, HO failures, and ping-pong effects, thus improving overall connection stability.

I. Introduction

Connection stability plays a significant role in ensuring vehicular safety and infotainment services [1]. Vehicles generate vast data with the enriched On-Board-Units (OBU), and exchange information with other vehicles, traffic infrastructure, and smart devices. A stable connection is crucial for safety-related data, as even a brief connection drop can lead to disastrous consequences. In addition, with the rising expectations for user experience, a reliable, high bandwidth, and low latency connection is necessary for vehicular networks to ensure a seamless experience [2].