Predictive Handover Control with Mobility and Future Signal Quality Awareness for 5G Vehicular Networks

Abstract

Frequent handovers remain a challenge in vehicular fifth-generation (5G) networks, especially in dense urban areas with small cells and intersections. Conventional handover decisions mainly follow the current radio condition and may select a target that is not stable along the vehicle's future route. This paper proposes a mobility- and radio-aware handover control method for 5G vehicular networks. The method keeps the default received-signal trigger as the initial detector, predicts a short future route from lane position, heading continuity, road topology, and transition-support information, and validates the candidate using a historical signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) grid map. It suppresses candidates that indicate a ping-pong return to the serving next-generation NodeB (gNB) or a short stay before another gNB becomes preferable, while a current SINR-based rescue rule avoids keeping the user equipment (UE) on a weak serving link. In a real-map Innsbruck urban microcell scenario with 85 vehicular UEs and 24 gNBs, the proposed method reduces total handovers by 28.9%, ping-pong handovers by 55.9%, and short-stay handovers by 69.0% compared with the default policy. The post-simulation reference signal received power (RSRP) evaluation also remains strong, with 99.46% of the proposed-method samples in the Excellent category and 0.54% in the Good category. These results show that mobility prediction with future SINR-map validation improves vehicular handover stability while preserving serving-link quality.