MACHU: A novel vertical handover algorithm for vehicular environments

Communications among vehicles and their capability of accessing cloud services is about to become a reality due to the ongoing development of sophisticated On-Board Units, which are powered by advanced processors, GPS devices, sensors, and multiple wireless access technologies such as Wi-Fi, WiMAX and UMTS. Users within vehicular networks will be able to access content from the Internet at high speeds while moving from one place to another, switching among multiple access points with heterogeneous coverage areas, as well as with different Quality of Service (QoS) levels offered. To maintain data connections alive in such dynamic conditions, Vertical Handover techniques are required. In this paper we present a Vertical Handover Decision Algorithm designed for dynamic environments. The decision making process is optimized by combining networking information, obtained by the services of the IEEE 802.21 standard, with geolocation, map information, surround context information and route calculation, thereby improving the handovers´ performance.