The vertical handoff in heterogeneous wireless networks

With the high development of wireless communications, next generation wireless networks must be heterogeneous networks. One of the major design issues is vertical handoff which is the decision for a mobile node to switch from one network to another different type of networks. In this paper, firstly we analyzed two schemes of network discovery and their limits. Then a discussion was made on the advantages and disadvantages of algorithms in handoff decision. In the end, the solutions of handoff execution were analyzed with future development direction.