Handover rate and sojourn time laws improve 3d cellular network design
Unified Geometric--Kinematic Laws of Mobility in 3D Cellular Networks
Information Theory
Summary
Managing mobile users, like drones or flying devices, in 3D cellular networks is tricky because they often switch between coverage zones. The authors provide a new way to understand how often these switches happen and how long users typically stay connected to a service area. Their approach combines geometry of network coverage with user movement patterns into formulas that predict these events. This helps to choose the right number of base stations and network setups to keep connections efficient and reliable.
What this means in practice
- •For wireless network planners: Optimize base station density and architecture by using precise handover rates to improve 3D mobile coverage for aerial users.
- •For drone communication teams: Design drone network connectivity strategies that account for mobility and service boundary geometry to reduce connection interruptions.
Authors
Tian Shi, Minghua Xia
Abstract
Mobility in three-dimensional (3D) cellular networks induces frequent handovers and random sojourn times for aerial users. Analyzing these events is challenging because they jointly depend on user trajectories and random service-boundary geometry. This paper develops a unified geometric--kinematic framework in which service regions form a stationary random tessellation, their boundaries constitute a random closed set, and user motion follows a cruise--turn mobility model. Under the stated stationarity, isotropy, and independence conditions, the handover rate satisfies the exact law \(H=(S_V/2)\bar v\), where \(S_V\) is the specific surface area and \(\bar v\) is the long-run mean speed. The forward boundary-distance distribution provides the local geometric input to an effective-traversal approximation for the mean remaining sojourn time. These results link global and local geometric descriptors to complementary mobility metrics. Combining the handover law with link coverage yields a handover-aware effective spectral efficiency for base station (BS) density selection and service-architecture comparison. We then specialize the framework to Poisson--Voronoi single-BS service and Poisson--Delaunay four-BS coordinated multi-point service; under both models, the handover rate scales as \(λ^{1/3}\bar v\). Numerical results corroborate the exact handover expressions, assess the sojourn-time approximations, and show how user speed and interruption duration affect the preferred density and architecture.