Handover management method and apparatus between tn and ntn

A handover management unit comprising a communication interface for acquiring metrics from user equipment, terrestrial network and non-terrestrial network;

• a processor configured to receive acquired metrics and control handover of user equipment;
• and a memory unit for storing data, wherein the handover management unit is configured to perform following steps:
• monitoring QCI based metrics for each service connected to a first network type or a second network type wherein first network type are different than each other and selected from a group consisting of terrestrial network and non-terrestrial network,
• acquiring UE information and UE based metrics from user equipment belonging to monitored services;
• determining at least a candidate network for each service which is in different network type the network type currently being used by said services for handover;
• generating predicted UE based metric and predicted QCI based metric for a future time window using a machine learning algorithm for first network type and second network type using UE information as input, where the machine learning algorithm is trained with reference user equipment information, reference UE based metric, reference QCI based metric taken on first network type and second network type;
• when generated predicted UE metric and predicted QCI based metric meet predetermined conditions, handovering at least a service of user equipment from existing network type to other network type.