Reducing Hand-Off Latency in WiMAX Network Using Cross Layer Information

With the growing demand for wireless Internet services and advancement in broadband wireless technologies, seamless hand-off has become a crucial factor in quality of service aware networks. The hierarchical WiMAX network model gives low hand-off latency but requires centralized control approach which introduces system overhead and increased packet end-to-end delay. The flat architecture model reduces system overhead and packet end to end delay at the cost of higher hand-off latency. Hence, a scheme to reduce hand off latency in flat architecture model is proposed. The proposed scheme utilizes information provided by the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer regarding hand-off in order to minimize network layer hand off delay. With the help of simulation using OPNET Modeler, it is shown that the new scheme decreases the hand-off latency while causing no extra overhead to the WiMAX network.