Handing Multiple Communications Sessions for the Next Generation of Wireless Networks

The handoff decision among heterogeneous wireless networks is a very important issue for integrating WLANs and cellular networks. Such networks exhibit different characteristics with respect to bandwidth, latency, power, and their charge model as well. In this paper, we present extensive numerical simulations of a novel vertical handover mechanism, which we proposed recently. We compare our mechanism with well known mechanisms: one based on the RSS (received signal strength) and the other one based on the traditional AHP (Analytic Hierarchichal Process) method. Our scheme considers that a mobile node carries more than one traffic class; it also integrates an MIH (Media Independent Handover) QoS Model, the AHP method, and cost functions to a fuzzy MADM (Multiple Attribute Decision Making) handover decision algorithm. We show that our proposed scheme overperforms the other two schemes. Moreover, our scheme performs handoff to the network providing the best QoS when the mobile node carries simultaneously multiple communication sessions, which is a very desirable characteristic on any handoff mechanism.