HONOR: O-RAN-compliant Handover Optimization in Vehicular Networks via Offline RL

Research output: Contribution to book/Conference proceedings/Anthology/ReportConference contributionContributedpeer-review

Abstract

Safety-critical vehicle-to-everything (V2X) services require stringent latency and reliability quality of service (QoS) under fast channel dynamics and dense traffic. In millimeter wave (mmWave) vehicular networks, analog beamforming mitigates path loss but enforces beam exclusivity, which couples multivehicle association decisions and complicates efficient handover. This paper proposes Handover Optimization in Vehicular Networks via Offline Reinforcement Learning (HONOR), an O-RAN-compliant handover xApp. Specifically, we formulate multi-vehicle handover as a Constrained Markov Decision Process (CMDP) subject to latency and reliability and handle the constraints via Lagrangian relaxation. To enforce one-to-one matching, an assignment-constrained factorized deep Q-learning network with validity masking is designed to obtain a feasible association via assignment-based action selection. Using a fixed dataset generated by O-RAN-integrated ns-3 simulations, the policy is learned offline and implemented as the HONOR xApp. Extensive evaluations with multiple random seeds show that HONOR reduces handover frequency by 18%-73% and suppresses ping-pong events by 41%- 81% relative to representative baselines, while improving latency and slightly increasing packet delivery reliability.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication2026 IFIP Networking Conference, IFIP Networking 2026
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
ISBN (electronic)978-3-903176-82-9
ISBN (print)979-8-3195-0779-2
Publication statusPublished - 30 Jun 2026
Peer-reviewedYes

Publication series

SeriesIFIP Networking Conference
ISSN1861-2288

Conference

Title25th International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Networking Conference
SubtitleAI-Driven Autonomous Networking
Abbreviated titleIFIP Networking 2026
Conference number25
Duration24 - 27 May 2026
Website
LocationUniversità della Svizzera italiana
CityLugano
CountrySwitzerland

External IDs

ORCID /0000-0001-8469-9573/work/222086246
ORCID /0000-0001-7008-1537/work/222088152
ORCID /0009-0005-7045-4096/work/222089830

Keywords

Keywords

  • handover, mmWave, ns-3, O-RAN, offline reinforcement learning, V2X