Active application oriented vertical handoff in next-generation wireless networks

The coexistence of heterogeneous wireless networks providing service anywhere at anytime is an inevitable trend in the development of next-generation wireless data networks. Vertical handoff is the switching of the mobile terminal (MT) among different types of wireless networks. How and when to carry out vertical handoff directly affects the performance and quality of network services. In this paper, we propose a novel vertical handoff scheme in which the MT can request and initiate the handoff actively, contrary to other schemes where the MTs participate passively during the handoff process. Our active application oriented scheme provides an efficient interface management for multi-interface MTs to reduce the power consumption caused by unnecessary interface activation. By treating the application running in the MT as the main vertical handoff decision factor, the proposed scheme is able to switch the MT at the right time to the most suitable network to minimize the waste of network resources. Finally, simulation results are presented to show the improved performance over passive schemes.