Predictive dynamic resource reservation for vertical handoff optimization in 4G mobile wireless networks

The fourth generation of mobile wireless networks (4G) is expected to be the most promising architecture for QoS provision due to its scalability, convenience for mobility support and capability of interworking heterogeneous radio access networks which ensure both session continuity and QoS support. One major design issue of the 4G is the support of optimized handoff functionalities. More specifically, total disruption during a handoff should be minimized and its complexity hidden to end users. This article focuses on dynamic predictive resource reservation in 4G in order to maximize handoff success probability. We discuss how to reserve radio resources according to future mobile terminal location expressed in a probabilistic way, to load conditions of target Base Station/Access Point BS/AP, and to the specificity of data structure of each access network. Different resource reservation algorithms are devised in this paper. The objective is to efficiently utilize the wireless radio resources, to enhance the handoff performances and to improve, therefore, the overall system performances. Results based on a detailed performance evaluation study are also presented here to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed algorithms.