A survey of seamless vertical handoff schemes for Wi-Fi/WiMAX heterogeneous networks

One of the most important issues in wireless and mobile communication technologies is to provide seamless handoff when a mobile node(MN) moves between different access networks. In this paper we have taken Wi-Fi/WiMAX heterogeneous networks in to consideration and reviewed the various seamless handoff schemes for vertical handoff between Wi-Fi and WiMAX networks at different layers. We assume the mobile terminals in our proposed network support IEEE 802.11 and IEEE802.16e dual interface. And also we have compared the schemes based on different criteria viz., handoff latency, packet loss, to provide a better QoS in real-time user scenarios. The comparison reveals the pros and cons of each scheme and aids to adopt a better scheme to achieve seamless handoff in next generation wireless networks.