Enhancing Handover Performance in LEO Satellite Networks with Multi-Connectivity and Conditional Handover Approach

Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites have emerged as an essential technology for 5G and beyond, with the capability to provide high-speed Internet connectivity on a global scale. However, the continuous movement of these satellites is a significant challenge. Most existing handover (HO) solutions rely on switching between serving and target satellites, resulting in a single-connectivity (SC) hard HO. In contrast, this study introduces a soft-HO methodology that uses dual connectivity and packet duplication during the multi-coverage period to connect users to both serving and target satellites via a multi-connectivity (MC) architecture. MC-HO considers the conditional HO technique and location-based trigger criterion. Compared to SC-HO, MC-HO exhibits a reduction in the average number of HOs and radio link failures. Thus, the proposed approach promises to improve the performance of handover, resulting in more stable and reliable connectivity.