Integrated handoff management in cognitive radio mobile ad hoc networks

The paper introduces proactive integrated handoff management (IHM) scheme in cognitive radio mobile ad hoc networks (CR-MANETs) through an established route. This scheme considers the primary user (PU) activity, secondary user (SU) mobility and channel heterogeneity in the spectrum handoff decision. To reduce the handoff delay, handoff thresholds are used. When the spectrum handoff cannot be done due to the SU´s mobility, a local flow handoff (LFH) is performed to find a node in the vicinity of a potential link breakage where the data flow is transferred to the node. The proposed proactive IHM scheme predicts the cognitive link availability that considers the interference to PUs to estimate the maximum link availability time. The availability time is then used in the channel allocation scheme. The results emphasized on improvement of the route maintenance probability using LFH. It is also verified that the number of handoff needed is significantly decreased using the proposed proactive IHM scheme.