Data-driven cellular mobility management via Bayesian optimization and reinforcement learning
Mobility management in cellular networks faces increasing complexity due to network densification and heterogeneous user mobility characteristics. Traditional handover (HO) mechanisms, which rely on predefined parameters such as A3-offset and time-to-trigger (TTT), often fail to optimize mobility pe...
| Autores: | , , , , |
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2026 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universitat Pompeu Fabra |
| Repositorio: | Repositorio Digital de la UPF |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:dnet:rdupf_______::6f36304338dfec450ecd8264edf2fd52 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://hdl.handle.net/10230/73308 http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TMLCN.2025.3647807 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Mobility management Cellular networks Bayesian optimization Reinforcement learning Data-driven optimization |
| Sumario: | Mobility management in cellular networks faces increasing complexity due to network densification and heterogeneous user mobility characteristics. Traditional handover (HO) mechanisms, which rely on predefined parameters such as A3-offset and time-to-trigger (TTT), often fail to optimize mobility performance across varying speeds and deployment conditions. Fixed A3-offset and TTT configurations either delay HOs, increasing radio link failures (RLFs), or accelerate them, leading to excessive ping-pong effects. To address these challenges, we propose two distinct data-driven mobility management approaches leveraging high-dimensional Bayesian optimization (HD-BO) and deep reinforcement learning (DRL). While HD-BO optimizes predefined HO parameters such as A3-offset and TTT, DRL provides a parameter-free alternative by allowing an agent to select serving cells based on real-time network conditions. We systematically compare these two approaches in real-world site-specific deployment scenarios (employing Sionna ray tracing for site-specific channel propagation modeling), highlighting their complementary strengths. Results show that both HD-BO and DRL outperform 3GPP set-1 (TTT of 480 ms and A3-offset of 3 dB) and set-5 (TTT of 40 ms and A3-offset of -1 dB) benchmarks. We augment HD-BO with transfer learning so it can generalize across a range of user speeds. Applying the same transfer-learning strategy to the DRL method reduces its training time by a factor of 2.5 while preserving optimal HO performance, showing that it adapts efficiently to the mobility of aerial users such as UAVs. Simulations further reveal that HD-BO remains more sample-efficient than DRL, making it more suitable for scenarios with limited training data. |
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