On the impact of mobile node radio architectures on heterogeneous wireless network standards: A performance analysis of LTE–eHRPD mobility

• We investigate the impact of mobile node radio architectures on achievable performance of mobility standards in wireless heterogeneous networks.
• We provide a first energy consumption analysis on LTE to eHRPD mobility.
• We discuss a first consideration for advanced flow-precision mobility supportability.

With the availability of various heterogeneous radio access technology standards, how to support multiple heterogeneous radio interfaces in a single device and provide seamless mobility between them is one of key issues in the design and implementation of modern multi-radio mobile devices (like smartphones). The radio architectures of such multi-radio mobile devices can have great impacts on achievable mobility performance. This paper presents a case study that investigates into the impacts of radio architecture design on mobility performance achievable in wireless standard implementation, with a particular focus on heterogeneous radio access mobility between Long Term Evolution (LTE) and enhanced High Rate Packet Data (eHRPD). We present an in-depth overview of handover procedures in standards and their achievable performance enhancements from the perspective of device radio architectures. We consider three radio architectures (single transmission/reception, single transmission dual reception, and dual transmission/reception architectures) and provide a performance analysis to compare the three architectures in terms of handover delay and energy consumption. We also discuss supportability for advanced flow-precision mobility under the different radio architectures, and present a comparison with another vertical handover technology.