An Efficient Group-Based Channel Scanning Scheme for Handover with IEEE 802.16e

Handover is a critical issue for wireless networks of various protocols including IEEE 802.16e. In this paper we propose an efficient handover scheme which reduces the number of packets required to be transmitted for handover and increases the channel availability. It is based on a concept of group-based channel scan and scheduled handover with the mobile stations (MSs). Computer simulation reveals that the proposed scheme allows efficient channel scan and substantial reduction of drop probability of handover requests compared to the existing scheme employing the MS grouping approach. The improvement gets more important as the rate of requests increases.