Performance of a soft handoff-like rerouting scheme for wireless ATM networks

This paper proposes a new soft handoff-like rerouting (SHLR) scheme for handoff of quality of service (QoS) based multimedia connections in wireless asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) networks and evaluates its performance. The main idea behind the SHLR scheme is the use of a make-before-break concept at the radio and network links to minimize latency and cell loss ratio during the handoff process. Performance of the SHLR scheme is evaluated using a discrete-event simulation technique to determine cell queueing delay and cell loss ratio. Results from simulation indicate that the cell queueing delay obtained for the SHLR scheme is better than that of existing schemes in the literature by a factor of at least 2. Further, the SHLR scheme provides up to two orders of magnitude improvement in cell loss ratio performance over that of the existing schemes. The results presented in the paper are useful for dimensioning buffer size as a function of QoS requirements and handoff traffic. The results also provide insights on the underlying causes of cell loss in wireless ATM networks.