An adaptive vertical handover algorithm based on the analytic hierarchy process for heterogeneous networks

In heterogeneous networks, various environmental changes will affect the performance of vertical handover algorithms. Aiming at the above problem, this paper presents an adaptive vertical handover algorithm based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The proposed algorithm makes the handover decision according to a cost function. The cost function value is affected by following parameters including cost, security, power consumption, received signal strength and signal delay. The adaptive mechanism is introduced to adjust the weight values of above parameters dynamically. A heterogeneous network model of WLAN and UMTS is constructed to simulate the algorithm. With the same simulation scenario, we compare the proposed algorithm with the previous vertical handover algorithm using another adaptive method. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm not only could obviously decrease the handover times, but also could reduce the handover delay and improve user experience.