Mobility enhancements to reduce service interruption time for LTE and 5G

Efficient and seamless mobility is one of the primary objectives for each cellular technology. Besides the reliability of such set of procedures, the aspect of paramount importance is also to minimize the length of data service disruption. There are numerous means to achieve such goal and this paper outlines those solutions along with an attempt to resolve some of their inherent deficiencies. The main focus is on the two solution subsets: make-before-break handover and RACH-less handover. Their potential gains are assessed and the cost of reaching those improvements is provided. Ultimately, most likely mobility enhancements that would pave the way for the New Radio Access Technology are identified.