A survey on various handover technologies in 5G network using the modular handover modules

Abstract

Purpose Fifth-generation (5G) networks play a significant role in handover methods. 5G wireless network is open, flexible and highly heterogeneous along with the overlay coverage and small cell deployments. Handover management is one of the main problems in the heterogeneous network. Also, handover satisfies the needs of ultra-reliable communications along with very high reliability and availability in 5G networks. Handover management deals with every active connection of a user’s device, which moves the connection between the user’s device and the counterparty from one network point to another. Thus, the handover decision determines the best access network and also decides whether the handover is performed or not. Design/methodology/approach The main intention of this survey is to review several existing handover technologies in 5G. Using the categories of analysis, the existing techniques are divided into different techniques such as authentication-based techniques, blockchain-based techniques, software-defined-based techniques and radio access-based techniques. The survey is made by considering the methods such as used software, categorization of methods and used in the research works. Furthermore, the handover rate is considered for performance evaluation for the handover techniques in 5G. The drawbacks present in the existing review papers are elaborated in research gaps and issues division. Findings Through the detailed analysis and discussion, it can be summarized that the widely concerned evaluation metric for the performance evaluation is the handover rate. It is exploited that the handover rate within the range of 91%–99% is achieved by three research papers. Originality/value A survey on the various handover mechanisms in 5G networks is expected in this study. The research papers used in this survey are gathered from different sources such as Google Scholar and IEEE. Also, this survey suggests a further extension for the handover mechanism in 5G networks by considering various research gaps and issues.