Vol.:(0123456789) Wireless Personal Communications https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-019-06463-2 1 3 New Weight Function for Adapting Handover Margin Level over Contiguous Carrier Aggregation Deployment Scenarios in LTE‑Advanced System Ibraheem Shayea 1,2  · Mahamod Ismail 1  · Rosdiadee Nordin 1  · Mustafa Ergen 2  · Norulhusna Ahmad 3  · Nor Fadzilah Abdullah 1  · Abdulraqeb Alhammadi 4  · Hafizal Mohamad 5 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019 Abstract In this paper, an Adaptive Handover Margin algorithm based on Novel Weight Function (AHOM-NWF) is proposed through Carrier Aggregation operation in Long Term Evolu- tion—Advanced system. The AHOM-NWF algorithm automatically adjusts the Hando- ver Margin level based on three functions, f (SINR), f (TL) and f (v), which are evaluated as functions of Signal-to-Interference-plus-Noise-Ratio (SINR), Traffic Load (TL), and User’s velocity (v) respectively. The weight of each function is taken into account in order to estimate an accurate margin level. Furthermore, a mathematical model for estimating the weight of each function is formulated by a simple model. However, AHOM-NWF algorithm will contribute for the perspective of SINR improvement, cell edge spectral effi- ciency enhancement and outage probability reduction. Simulation results have shown that the AHOM-NWF algorithm enhances system performance more than the other considered algorithms from the literature by 24.4, 14.6 and 17.9%, as average gains over all the con- sidered algorithms in terms of SINR, cell edge spectral efficiency and outage probability reduction respectively. Keywords Adaptive handover margin · Weight function · Carrier aggregation · LTE- advanced · Cell edge throughput and outage probability 1 Introduction Handover (HO) is an important process which supports service continuity and balances traffic loads between cells in the entire network area throughout an active user call. How- ever, the handover process must be imperceptible to the user to provide a seamless connec- tion with good service quality. Thus, the Handover Decision (HOD) Algorithm (HODA) must be well-designed and intact, and the Handover Execution (HOE) process must be fast and reliable. This paper focuses on the handover decision during CA implementation in * Ibraheem Shayea ibr.shayea@gmail.com Extended author information available on the last page of the article