Air interface switching and performance analysis for fast vertical handoff in cellular network and WLAN interworking

The integration of wireless local area network (WLAN) hotspot and the 3G cellular networks is imminently the future mode of public access networks. One of the key elements for the successful integration is vertical handoff between the two heterogeneous networks. Service disruption may occur during the vertical handoff because of the IP layer handoff activities, such as registration, binding update, routing table update, etc. In this paper, the network interface switching and registration process are proposed for the integrated WLAN/cellular network. Two types of fast vertical handoff protocols based on bicasting and non‐bicasting supporting real‐time traffic, such as voice over IP, are modeled. The performance of a bicasting based handoff scheme is analyzed and compared with that of fast handoff without bicasting. Numerical results and the simulation are given to show that packet loss rate can be reduced by the bicasting during handoff scheme without increasing bandwidth on both wireless interfaces. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

异构无线网络垂直切换技术综述

垂直切换是多网融合的基础,是实现异构网络互通、支持不同接入方式无缝衔接的核心技术,目前正在受到业界的重点关注,并成为学术界研究的热点问题。随着无线移动通信技术向接入多元化、网络一体化和应用综合化的方向发展,各种蜂窝移动接入、宽带无线接入和固定接入将共同接入基于IP的统一核心网络,通过网络间的垂直切换,支持用户的移动性和移动过程中业务的连续性。首先给出了垂直切换的定义和基本概念,介绍了垂直切换的分类和基本流程,随后详细论述垂直切换的切换判决和切换执行2个环节。针对切换判决,总结了现有判决算法,重点评述各代表算法工作原理并剖析论其特点和存在的不足。针对切换执行,详述了现有垂直切换执行机制的工作原理和适用场景,并分析其优缺点。最后,对未来垂直切换技术的研究方向进行了展望。     

Efficient mobility management for vertical handoff between WWAN and WLAN

As we move toward next-generation all-IP wireless networks, we are facing the integration of heterogeneous networks, such as WWAN and WLAN, where vertical handoff is required. In vertical handoff between WWAN and WLAN, mobile hosts should be able to move freely across different networks while satisfying QoS requirements for a variety of applications. In order to achieve seamless handoff and maintain continuity of connection, we propose a novel mobility. management system that integrates a connection manager to detect network condition changes in a timely and accurate manner, and a virtual connectivity manager that uses an end-to-end principle to maintain a connection without additional network infrastructure support. A prototype system was built to test the effectiveness of the proposed system. Experiments show that seamless roaming between WLAN and WWAN can be achieved, and much better performance can be obtained than with the traditional scheme.     

Fast Handoff in SIP-Based Next Generation Mobile Networks

It is commonly held that next generation mobile systems will be developed on the Internet in combination with diverse access technologies, as the future network architecture will be the coming together of various overlapping wireless access networks. Integrating various wireless networks in future heterogeneous networking environments poses many difficulties, the most critical challenge of which is efficient support for seamless mobility. SIP is a promising nominee for managing mobility in heterogeneous networks as it provides mobility within the application layer and the characteristics of the lower layer protocols are invisible to it. However, the performance of SIP-based mobility management is downgraded, resulting from its adoption of TCP/UDP for signaling and its strict separation between the lower layers and the application layer of the protocol stack. In this paper, a SIP-based cross-layer design for fast handoffs is proposed to shorten the service interruption time when a mobile node crosses the overlapped area of a WLAN/3G cellular system. As will be shown by the simulation results, the SIP-based solution proposed in this paper effectively lessens the handoff delays caused by either the horizontal handoff or vertical handoff in future all-IP heterogeneous wireless networks.     

一种基于上下文感知的垂直切换技术研究

未来网络的发展趋势是各种无线接入网络共存的异构网络环境,而垂直切换技术是融合多个异构接入网络的关键技术之一,垂直切换包括三个阶段,即系统发现、切换决策和切换执行。文中主要研究了基于上下文感知的垂直切换判决策略,并与移动垂直切换技术相结合,实现了WLAN/UMTS网络间的垂直切换,通过仿真表明该方法在吞吐量和切换时延方面都得到改善。     

A framework of handoffs in wireless overlay networks based on mobile IPv6

Although there are various wireless access network technologies with different characteristics and performance level have been developed, no single network that can satisfy the anytime, anywhere, and any service wireless access needs of mobile users. A truly seamless mobile environment can only be realized by considering vertical and horizontal handoffs together. With the advantages of Mobile IPv6, a more comprehensive and integrated framework of heterogeneous networks can be developed. In this paper, we discuss the issues related to handoffs including horizontal and vertical handoffs. We present a scheme for integrating wireless local area network and wide area access networks, and propose a micromobility management method called HiMIPv6+. We also propose a QoS-based (quality-of-service-based) vertical handoff scheme and algorithm that consider wireless network transport capacity and user service requirement. Our prototype evaluations and the simulations show that our framework performs as expected.     

A channel preemption model for vertical handoff in a WLAN-embedded cellular network

In this paper, a channel preemption model for vertical handoff in a WLAN-embedded cellular network is presented. In a heterogeneous networking environment, since many wireless LANs may be deployed within the coverage of a cellular network, horizontal handoffs among neighboring WLANs and vertical handoffs between a WLAN and the cellular network could occur frequently. Performance in terms of blocking probability of the cellular network can be seriously degraded if the channels are not appropriately allocated. The novelty of this paper is right in that a newly initiated mobile node (MN) outside the WLAN coverage can preempt the channels occupied by an MN inside the WLAN coverage when the cellular channels are completely used up. The channel preempted MN is forced to switch its network access to a WLAN. This proposed channel preemption scheme can effectively reduce the blocking probability while not disrupting any of the existing connections within WLANs. For the purpose of performance evaluation, we build a three-dimension Markov chains to analyze the proposed channel preemption mechanism. We derive the equations of move-in and move-out mobility rates based on the node speed and residence times, respectively. The network performance in terms of the number of active WLAN users, the channel utilization and the channel blocking probability of a cellular network, the preemption probability, and the preempted probability of an MN are calculated. From the analytical results, we observe the performance improvements by varying the node speed and the ratio of WLAN coverage.     

An enhanced TCP for upward vertical handoff in integrated WLAN and cellular networks

The integration of wireless local area networks (WLANs) and third generation (3G) cellular networks has been recently a subject of great interest, mainly aimed at augmenting cellular networks with high‐rate data services by WLANs in hotspots. The complementary characteristics of 3G cellular networks and 802.11 WLANs are expected to offer the best of both technologies. On the other hand, the drastically different characteristics of both networks could be a serious obstacle to providing seamless mobility in the integrated WLAN and cellular networks. In particular, mobile users suffer from a drastic decrease in data rate after a vertical handoff from a WLAN to a 3G cellular network. However, current TCP congestion control cannot adapt to the change in the data rate after the vertical handoff, resulting in significant throughput degradation. Thus, we propose a novel TCP scheme to enhance the throughput when a vertical handoff occurs from a WLAN to a cellular network. For the proposed scheme, the throughput performance is investigated via analytic modeling and simulation. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

车联网中基于贝叶斯决策的垂直切换方法研究

车辆需要在车联网的异构无线网络环境下进行垂直切换,针对垂直切换技术普遍不能支持 WAVE, WiMAX和3G cellular间的垂直切换这一问题,提出了一种基于贝叶斯决策的垂直切换算法。首先,根据接入网络的信号强度、传输速率、误码率和网络阻塞率以及车辆终端的速度和运动趋势建立多条件相关的切换概率分布,计算出切换先验概率;然后通过贝叶斯决策算法计算后验概率并进行决策分类,从而选取最优网络接入。仿真实验结果表明,该算法不仅有效地实现WAVE,WiMAX和3G cellular无线接入技术之间的垂直切换,而且避免了乒乓效应,保证了网络及时更新。     

Resource management for QoS support in cellular/WLAN interworking

To provide mobile users with seamless Internet access anywhere and anytime/ there is a strong demand for interworking mechanisms between cellular networks and wireless local area networks in the next-generation all-IP wireless networks. In this article we focus on resource management and call admission control for QoS support in cellular/WLAN interworking. In specific, a DiffServ interworking architecture with loose coupling is presented. Resource allocation in the interworking environment is investigated/ taking into account the network characteristics, vertical handoff, user mobility, and service types. An effective call admission control strategy with service differentiation is proposed for QoS provisioning and efficient resource utilization. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed call admission control scheme.     

无线异构网络中带有动态权值的新型垂直切换算法

In order to enhance the quality of vertical handoff in an overlay wireless network, multiple attributes are taken into account when optimizing the vertical handoff decision including user-based and network-based QoS factors. In this paper, we develop a novel vertical handoff algorithm in an integrated 3G cellular and Wireless LAN networks. The proposed algorithm can adjust the weight of each QoS attribute dynamically as the networks change, trace the network condition and choose the optimal access point at transient regions. Simulation results show that this algorithm is able to provide accurate handoff decision, resulting in small unnecessary handoff numbers, good performance of throughput and handoff delay in heterogeneous environments.     

异构无线网络中基于SINR和层次分析法的SAW垂直切换算法研究

B3G或者4G无线网络体系致力于集成各种异构无线接入网络,其中一个主要的设计课题是支持垂直切换的研究。该文将多属性QoS考虑在内,针对各业务特点,提出一种基于SINR(信干噪比)和层次分析法(AHP)的SAW(简单加权法)垂直切换算法(SASAW)。它综合考虑SINR的影响以及要获得同等数据速率情况下,目标网络需要的等效SINR数值、用户通信代价、网络可用带宽等来构造属性矩阵做切换判决。为了评估性能,考虑3GPP定义的4类业务,利用层次分析法中的特征向量法来决定各个QoS属性之间的权重关系,构造比较判决矩阵并检验其一致性;根据判决矩阵,利用特征根法获得权重向量;最后根据属性矩阵和权重向量,利用SAW垂直切换算法进行判决。通过对算法的通过率、丢话率、垂直切换次数、平均用户代价等的性能比较,结果表明该文提出的算法能够根据各业务特点综合考虑各属性间关系,获得优良的系统性能。     

SIP-based vertical handoff between WWANs and WLANs

Future-generation wireless networks have been envisioned as the integration of various wireless access networks, including both wireless wide area networks and wireless local area networks. In such a heterogeneous network environment, seamless mobility support is the basis of providing uninterrupted wireless services to mobile users roaming between various wireless access networks. Because of transparency to lower-layer characteristics, ease of deployment, and greater scalability, the application-layer-based session initiation protocol has been considered the right candidate for handling mobility in heterogeneous wireless networks. However, SIP entails application-layer transport and processing of messages, which may introduce considerable delay. As a case study of the performance of mobility management protocols in the heterogeneous wireless networks, we analyze the delay associated with vertical handoff using SIP in the WLAN-UMTS internetwork. Analytical results show that WLAN-to-UMTS handoff incurs unacceptable delay for supporting real-time multimedia services, and is mainly due to transmission of SIP signaling messages over erroneous and bandwidth-limited wireless links. On the other hand, UMTS-to-WLAN handoff experiences much less delay, mainly contributed by the processing delay of signaling messages at the WLAN gateways and servers. While the former case requires the deployment of soft handoff techniques to reduce the delay, faster servers and more efficient host configuration mechanisms can do the job in the latter case.     

A Simple and Robust Vertical Handoff Algorithm for Heterogeneous Wireless Mobile Networks

Wireless networking is becoming an increasingly important and popular way of providing global information access to users on the move. One of the main challenges for seamless mobility is the availability of simple and robust vertical handoff algorithms, which allow a mobile node to roam among heterogeneous wireless networks. In this paper, motivated by the facts that vertical handoff procedure is done on mobile nodes and battery power may be one crucial parameter for certain mobile nodes, a simple and robust two-step vertical handoff decision algorithm is proposed for heterogeneous wireless mobile networks. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first vertical handoff algorithm that takes the classification of mobile nodes into consideration, one is resource-poor mobile nodes, and the other is resource-rich mobile nodes. This new feature makes it more applicable in the real world. In addition, dynamic new call blocking probability is firstly introduced by this paper to make handoff decision for wireless networks. The experiment results have shown that the proposed algorithm outperforms traditional algorithms in bandwidth utilization, handoff dropping rate and handoff rate.     

异构网络垂直切换技术

下一代无线网络(Next Generation Wireless Networks,NGWN)将融合多种不同的网络体系结构与无线技术,NGWN的异构性要求向用户提供无缝切换。为此文章引入了异构无线网络垂直切换策略,并深入论述了其中的关键细节——网络发现、切换判决和切换信息交互流程等。     

Vertical handoffs in fourth-generation multinetwork environments

Revolutionary drivers for 4G include a push toward universal wireless access and ubiquitous computing through seamless personal and terminal mobility. One of the major challenges for seamless mobility is the criterion of a vertical handoff protocol: a handoff protocol for users that move between different types of networks. Traditional operations for handoff detection policies, decision metrics, and radio link transfer are not able to adapt to dynamic handoff criteria or react to user inputs and changing network availabilities. Nor are they able to deliver context-aware services or ensure network interoperability. Thus, new techniques are needed to manage user mobility between different types of networks. This article presents a tutorial on the design and performance issues for vertical hand-off in an envisioned multinetwork fourth-generation environment. Various network architectures and technologies for 3G and beyond are described, including wireless LANs, cellular, satellite, and Mobile IP. Then the problem of vertical handoff is defined in the context of such a diverse network environment. Finally, research efforts to resolve the open problems are explored, including new techniques for dynamic handoff decision and detection algorithms and context-aware radio link transfer.     

Optimal Joint Session Admission Control in Integrated WLAN and CDMA Cellular Networks with Vertical Handoff

This paper considers optimizing the utilization of radio resources in a heterogeneous integrated system consisting of two different networks: a wireless local area network (WLAN) and a wideband code division multiple access (CDMA) network. We propose a joint session admission control scheme for multimedia traffic that maximizes overall network revenue with quality of service (QoS) constraints over both the WLAN and the CDMA cellular networks. The WLAN operates under the IEEE 802.11e medium access control (MAC) protocol, which supports QoS for multimedia traffic. A novel concept of effective bandwidth is used in the CDMA network to derive the unified radio resource usage, taking into account both physical layer linear minimum mean square error (LMMSE) receivers and characteristics of the packet traffic. Numerical examples illustrate that the network revenue earned in the proposed joint admission control scheme is significantly larger than that when the individual networks are optimized independently with no vertical handoff between them. The revenue gain is also significant over the scheme in which vertical handoff is supported, but admission control is not done jointly. Furthermore, we show that the optimal joint admission control policy is a randomized policy, i.e., sessions are admitted to the system with probabilities in some states     

An Empirical Analysis of Handoff Performance for SIP,Mobile IP,and SCTP Protocols

Over the last decade, we have witnessed a growing interest in the design and deployment of various network architectures and protocols aimed at supporting mobile users as they move across different types of networks. One of the goals of these emerging network solutions is to provide uninterrupted, seamless connectivity to mobile users giving them the ability to access information anywhere, anytime. Handoff management, an important component of mobility management, is crucial in enabling such seamless mobility across heterogeneous network infrastructures. In this work, we investigate the handoff performance of three of the most widely used mobility protocols namely, Mobile IP, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), and Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP). Our empirical handoff tests were executed on an actual heterogeneous network testbed consisting of wired, wireless local area, and cellular networks using performance metrics such as handoff delay and handoff signaling time. Our empirical results reveal that Mobile IP yields the highest handoff delay among the three mobility protocols. In addition, we also found that SIP and SCTP yield 33 and 55% lower handoff delays respectively compared to Mobile IP.     

A constrained MDP-based vertical handoff decision algorithm for 4G heterogeneous wireless networks

The 4th generation wireless communication systems aim to provide users with the convenience of seamless roaming among heterogeneous wireless access networks. To achieve this goal, the support of vertical handoff is important in mobility management. This paper focuses on the vertical handoff decision algorithm, which determines the criteria under which vertical handoff should be performed. The problem is formulated as a constrained Markov decision process. The objective is to maximize the expected total reward of a connection subject to the expected total access cost constraint. In our model, a benefit function is used to assess the quality of the connection, and a penalty function is used to model the signaling incurred and call dropping. The user’s velocity and location information are also considered when making handoff decisions. The policy iteration and Q-learning algorithms are employed to determine the optimal policy. Structural results on the optimal vertical handoff policy are derived by using the concept of supermodularity. We show that the optimal policy is a threshold policy in bandwidth, delay, and velocity. Numerical results show that our proposed vertical handoff decision algorithm outperforms other decision schemes in a wide range of conditions such as variations on connection duration, user’s velocity, user’s budget, traffic type, signaling cost, and monetary access cost.     

Seamless vertical handoff using modified weed optimization algorithm for heterogeneous wireless networks

In the global scenario, a variety of wireless access networks are available. Different types of applications such as real time, nonreal time, and high bandwidth availability are used for heterogeneous wireless networks. Therefore, it is necessary for a service provider to make an appropriate connection support. For better performance, connections are to be exchanged among the different networks using seamless vertical handoff (VHO). The proposed algorithm shows the effect of optimization technique, which involves handoff decision process using vertical handoff triggering and selection of the network. The handoff triggering is initiated by using the received signal strength (RSS). In traditional method, handoff triggering is initiated by using RSS only. This method, modified weed optimization (M-WO) algorithm, reduces the unnecessary handoff by considering both RSS and velocity of the mobile node in handoff triggering. The parameters such as battery lifetime, handoff call dropping rate, load, dynamic weights adaptation and so on are to be considered individually or combined to make an effective network selection process. This paper highlights a novel effect ofM-WOalgorithm for decision making during the VHO. Our effort is to essentially optimize the system load, so that it reduces the handoff call dropping rate and the battery power consumption of the mobile node (MN). Weight of each QoS metrics is adjusted along with the networks changing conditions to trace the M-WO. Therefore, the novel VHO decision-making algorithm is superior to the existing SSF and OPTG methods. The simulation results show that the performance ofM-WOalgorithm is far better than SSF andOPTGmethods in terms of load, handoff call dropping rate and battery lifetime of MN.