CHO-Conditional Handover-NR

In Release-16, 3GPP Introduced a new Handover

procedure that allows UE to decide to perform
handover when certain conditions are met, In the
Legacy handover procedure network was in charge
of making the decision whether the handover
should be performed or not and it was a reactive
process and prone to resulting in handover failures.
 Introduction
•5G brings significant performance requirements to wireless networks to meet the needs of new use cases and customer experienc e.
Enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) has uplink and downlink throughputs in the range of gigabits per second, and Ultra-Reliable and Low
Latency Communications (URLLC) needs air interface latencies below 1 ms.
•Handover performance can have significant impacts on the ability to meet these needs. Interrupting data flow during a handover or, worse
yet, a handover failure dramatically impacts the ability to meet these requirements.

Basic Handover →

The handover procedure happens

in stages like prior generations of
wireless standards. Once a
measurement is received, it can
take some time to prepare the
target cell for the handover. In
addition, during execution, the
flow of data is interrupted from
the time the mobile is told to
move by the source cell to the
time the mobile arrives at the
target cell.
 what is CHO ???????

A Conditional Handover (CHO) is defined

as a handover that is executed by the UE
when one or more handover execution
conditions are met. The UE starts
evaluating the execution condition(s)
upon receiving the CHO configuration,
and the UE stops evaluating the execution
condition(s) once a handover is executed
(legacy handover or conditional handover
execution).
 3GPP Specifications has defined the
following principles for CHO:
•The Candidate gNB(s) or the Potential Target gNB(s) provide the CHO configuration.
•The Source gNB Provides the execution condition(s) to the UE on when to trigger CHO.
•The execution condition may consist of one or two trigger condition(s).
•Only a Single Reference signal type is supported for CHO and at most two different trigger quantities (e.g. RSRP and RSRQ, RS RP and
SINR, etc.) can be configured simultaneously for the evaluation of CHO execution conditions of a single candidate cell.
•If a UE is configured with CHO Configuration and before the CHO execution condition is satisfied another HO Command is receiv ed
from the gNB, then UE will trigger Handover based on the HO Command received and will not wait for any of the CHO Conditions to
satisfy.
•In Short, the Legacy HO Configuration takes precedence over the CHO Configuration (if configured).
•While executing CHO, i.e. from the time when the UE starts synchronization with the target cell, UE does not monitor the sour ce cell.
•Condition Handover (CHO) is not supported for NG-C based handover in release-16 of the specification
Link recovery using Conditional
Handover configurations
Conditional Handover call flow
Step:1 it is the RRC Measurement Report indicating that
handover to a neighbor cell is required. However, this
message contains a list of candidate neighbor cells.
Step:2 it is assumed that each of these candidate cells is
controlled by a different gNB. Hence, 3 XnAP Handover
Preparation procedures are performed and each potential
target gNB allocates radio resources for the UE and
provides a handover command (NR RRC Reconfiguration
message) that is sent back to the source gNB)
Step:3 the source gNB builds the conditional handover
command, which is a NR RRC Reconfiguration message that
contains a list of conditional reconfiguration options plus
additional RRC measurement configurations that enable
the UE to find out which of the possible target cells is the
best fit.
Step:4 the UE makes its handover decision and moves to
the cell controlled by target gNB 1
Step 5: it NR RRC Reconfiguration Complete message.
Step 6: The target gNB 1 detects the handover completion
based on the reception of the NR RRC Reconfiguration
Complete message, performs NGAP Path Switch procedure
and triggers the release of the UE context in source gNB on
behalf of sending the XnAP UE Context Release message
Step:7 the source gNB also detects the successful
handover completion & the release of the radio resources
provided by target gNB 2 and 3 to which it sends the new
XnAP Conditional Handover Cancel message.

Note : 1 the conditional handover is also possible for LTE radio

connections. In this case X2AP is used instead of XnAP and LTE RRC
instead of NR RRC
Note : 2 The conditional handover can be performed for all kind of
intra-eNB/gNB handover and X2/Xn handover. However, S1/N2 (NG-C)
conditional handover is not allowed
 CHO in Non-Terrestrial Networks
->The support of cellular technology using satellites brings new
opportunity to offer global coverage also in the areas which
were so far deprived of mobile communications. However, this
comes at certain expense – at least the need to resolve
demanding NTN-specific issues. One of such areas to address is
mobility, which in Non-Terrestrial Networks could be
problematic, especially for Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites,
typically operating at the altitudes between 600 and 1200
kilometers. This alone implies large propagation delays which
inevitably affects the on-time execution of the HO.
Furthermore, LEO satellite’s continuous movement results in
both the UEs and the gNBs operating in motion, unlike in
Terrestrial Networks (TNs), where the base stations’ position is
fixed. One can easily conclude this leads to the temporary
nature of the coverage provided on Earth, which will move
along with satellites movement. LEO satellites’ velocity can be
roughly 7.5 km/s, which is clearly a non-negligible value in
terms of how quickly the footprint on Earth will disappear.

->In the classical approach to CHO, the execution criteria are

evaluated in terms of the radio condition (e.g. received signal
strength/quality) of the source and target cells. For NTN,
however, new conditions would need to be introduced, to
consider the satellite’s movement and temporary coverage

->HO in LEO-based NTN is attempted every 5-6 seconds).

Relying on the received signal strength/quality distribution
within the cell may be insufficient as the deviation of
measured received signal in the cell centre and cell edge may
be too minor for the UE to realize the cell’s signal
strength/quality is deteriorating and the coverage will
disappear soon. Thus, it was decided to introduce two
additional handover execution criteria for NTN

1->Timing-based handover execution

2->Location-based handover execution
 CHO in Integrated Access Backhaul
Integrated Access Backhaul is a functionality
in New Radio, which allows to relay the
wireless communication using Radio Access
Network (RAN). A new entity, called IAB-
donor, has been introduced, whose
responsibility is to backhaul the traffic and
additionally offer the gNB functionality. IAB-
donors are connected with IAB-nodes,
which are the equivalents of gNB-DU
(Distributed Unit) and also support the UE
functionalities (denoted in this context as
IAB-MT). The detailed architecture and
related procedures are captured in the
dedicated technical report . 3GPP Release
17 specifies further enhancements to IAB
framework, including CHO for improved
reliability. CHO is considered for IAB-MTs,
which shall largely resemble the procedure
defined in Release 16 for handing over the
UEs. However, CHO is also a candidate
solution for IAB-node migration, where IAB-
node moves to a different parent node
under the same IAB-donor CU (Centralized
Unit). IAB-node is static, so the condition for
executing the migration will likely differ
from the one defined for IAB-MT. The 3GPP
Release 17 work concerning the enhanced
IAB will be finalized in the middle of 2022.
 CHO in NR-Unlicensed

Mobility in NR-U is another area which has to be

tackled differently than handovers in typical
systems operating in the licensed frequency
bands. In NR-U multiple UEs may be competing
for the access to the spectrum in an
uncoordinated manner. Thus, it may be
insufficient to reuse the existing Release 16 CHO
triggering conditions which rely purely on
reference signal quality or power level. Instead,
it shall be considered how to employ the LBT
result into the decision to execute CHO. The UE
shall sense the communication channel and
trigger the CHO only if the result of such channel
verification meets the predefined criteria
Thank You