Supporting VHO by a Self-Organizing Mutidimnensional P2P Overlay

Vertical handovers (VHO) are expected to be a key feature in Beyond 3G (B3G) networks. This paper presents a CAN-based P2P overlay network for supporting vertical handover in B3G networks. The P2P overlay is used to quickly locate attachment points (APs) for mobile entities and to retrieve rapidly the configuration and coverage information of these APs. The advantage of the P2P-based solution is its distributed nature, its scalability, and its self-organizing capability. We show by means of simulation the efficiency and the scalability of our approach in comparison to a standard CAN implementation