Hard handover mechanism is adopted to be used in 3GPP Long Term Evolution (3GPP LTE) in order to reduce the complexity of the LTE network architecture. This mechanism comes with degradation in system throughput as well as a higher system delay. This paper proposes a new handover algorithm known as LTE Hard Handover Algorithm with Average Received Signal Reference Power (RSRP) Constraint (LHHAARC) in order to minimize number of handovers and the system delay as well as maximize the system throughput. An optimized system performance of the LHHAARC is evaluated and compared with three well-known handover algorithms via computer simulation. The simulation results show that the LHHAARC outperforms three well-known handover algorithms by having less number of average handovers per UE per second, shorter total system delay whilst maintaining a higher total system throughput.

16 pages, 9 figures, International Journal of Wireless & Mobile Networks (IJWMN)