Performance enhancement of vertical handover in heterogeneous wireless networks

Abstract

One of the latest trends in wireless communication is providing seamless connectivity to support continuous communication for the user on move. The vertical handover management which is an implied function of mobility management is important for providing Always Best Connectivity. The uniqueness of vertical handover is, it supports handover over number of dissimilar wireless radio access technologies. The dynamic nature of the user makes vertical handover mandatory for continuity in communication. From the seamless wireless communication perspective, considerable research study has been made in vertical handover network selection and handover decision making for making proper handover execution. Vertical handover is done by deciding and selecting the best network and performing the handover at the right time. Most of the handover process depends on the conventional type of considering only the RSS alone or RSS with threshold or hysteresis. But, this method cannot be applied for the heterogeneous scenario, as it comprises of different networks with complementary characteristics. So, the vertical handover decision algorithms must consider many criteria like cost of services, mobile velocity, available bandwidth, and user preferences, services supported by the network and power consumption with the required RSS or SINR to perform proper handover to support the user requirements. This makes the process of deciding the handover more complex while handling multiple criteria. The proposed work is focused on improving the performance of vertical handover by considering multiple metrics in the handover decision, network selection and execution. newline