Vertical Handover Necessity Estimation Based on a New Dwell Time Prediction Model for Minimizing Unnecessary Handovers to a WLAN Cell

In this work, we devise a vertical handover necessity estimation (HNE) method to minimize unnecessary handovers for a mobile node (MN) entering a WLAN cell. The method relies on a new model for prediction of dwell time and computation of certain threshold values. By comparing the predicted dwell time with those thresholds, a MN is able to make decision whether it should perform handover to a WLAN cell, while keeping the probability of handover failure and probability of unnecessary handover within bounds. Simulation results obtained from Monte-Carlo experiments prove validity of the proposed model. We also compare this model with existing models for minimizing unnecessary handovers. We further enhance the analytical model by incorporating the throughput gain in HNE and show that this can further optimize handover decision in heterogenous networks.     

Adaptive distribution‐based handover scheme for cellular communication networks

In this paper, we propose a new Generalized Distribution‐Based Handover (DBHO) to deal with the inefficient utilization of spectral resources due to the non‐uniform cell loads. The DBHO scheme is different from the existing adaptive schemes since it uses a new criterion to initiate handover when moving from/to a congested cell. Two risk factors are used to dynamically change handover boundaries according to the distribution of traffic loads. This controls the handover initiation process such that a user in a congested cell that is moving to a free cell is allowed to initiate a handover to a new cell earlier, as long as the signal received from the target cell is higher than a certain threshold. While delaying the handover initiation process for a user moving in the opposite direction, as long as the signal received from the serving cell is not lower than a certain threshold. Our results show a substantial reduction in the handover and call dropouts rates. Our scheme is complementary to the existing adaptive schemes proposed in the literature. The proposed scheme also gives cellular system designers a new tool to optimize the overall network performance by initiating handovers based on the traffic intensities. Frequent handovers increase the load on switching networks, which consequently degrades the Quality of Service (QoS). Existing handover schemes usually use parameters such as the received signal strength for initiating a handover with some additional measurements to reduce unnecessary handovers and call dropouts. These schemes perform well when cell loads are somewhat evenly distributed, but fail to account for nonuniform traffic, as is often the case in microcells. Hence, it is desirable to design efficient handover schemes to avoid unnecessary handovers, reduce call dropouts and yet dynamically adapt to the variation of traffic among cells. In this paper, we present a new adaptive handover scheme that dynamically changes the handover boundaries to balance cell loads and to effectively reduce the average number of handovers. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Handover procedure and decision strategy in LTE-based femtocell network

Wireless systems have the capability to serve users over broad geographic area without using a costly network infrastructure. However, the main drawback of these systems represents the bandwidth restrictions and coverage. Deployment of femtocell as the emerging promising wireless access technology becomes one of possible solution how to overcome some of the drawbacks. In this paper, we investigate the handover procedure in femtocell network considering, both types of handovers, horizontal and vertical. The 3GPP LTE based handover procedure is analysed for three scenarios: hand-in, hand-out and inter-FAP. In addition, the reactive handover decision policy, based on the prediction of user movement and the prediction of target-FAP, is proposed as a way to eliminate frequent and unnecessary handovers.     

Interference and Resource management strategy for handover in femtocells

Interference in femtocells due to neighboring femtocells and macrocells is a major issue of two-tier networks. Handover should be made to reduce interference, if and only if, when resources are available. Otherwise, it will further degrade network performance. Resource management should be made in an efficient manner that will not cause interference between macrocells and neighboring femtocells. Since distance between macro base station (MBS) and femto access point (FAP) is short, therefore, it is very hard to sustain low handover probability when macro user moves from MBS to FAP. We proposed handover algorithm for uplink co-channel interference mitigation that will make handover decision on the basis of time-to-stay and signal to interference plus noise ratio thresholds along with efficient resource management mechanism to reduce number of handovers and also resolve interference problem.

     

基于SideLink的LTE-V2X联合切换方案设计

在LTE-V2X系统中,针对车载用户切换过程中蜂窝链路及SideLink(SL)链路质量不高以及SL辅助切换过程中SL链路易中断的问题,该文提出一种基于SL的联合切换方案,主要包含:联合切换流程设计、联合切换信令流程设计以及联合切换判决算法设计。首先,在联合切换流程中利用SL技术实现联合切换,并对执行联合切换的SL链路质量进行筛选,以保证联合切换的可靠性;其次,对联合切换信令流程进行了完善,以优化SL辅助切换过程中SL链路易中断问题;最后,在联合切换判决算法中将车载用户的移动方向纳入切换判决条件,从而减少不必要的切换。仿真结果显示,该文所提方案能有效提升切换成功率,与此同时还能有效减少执行LTE切换的次数。     

Software‐defined networking to improve handover in mobile edge networks

Mobility management and handover for a seamless connection are among all‐time challenges of wireless networks. Software‐defined networking (SDN) has opened new horizons toward research by adding intelligence in edge networks while decoupling the control and data planes. The flexibility and centralized nature of SDN further improve the handover decision algorithms. In this paper, we have improved the network performance with respect to the number of handovers and the handover delay by applying an LTE‐SDN architecture and a novel handover decision algorithm based on predicting the future locations of a moving vehicle. The proposed algorithm decouples the handover procedure into two phases of preparation and execution. In the preparation phase, which occurs in the control plane, the handover decision and resource allocation take place, and in the execution phase, handover gets executed similar to the LTE architecture. The results of our research indicate that our proposed LTE‐SDN performance is improved with respect to the number of handovers, handover delay, and signaling overhead by 24%, 16%, and 20%, respectively. On the other hand, average Reference Signal Received Quality (RSRQ) value is decreased by 4% as a tradeoff for the improvements gained.     

A genetic algorithm approach for multi-attribute vertical handover decision making in wireless networks

Mobile terminals can typically connect to multiple wireless networks which offer varying levels of suitability for different classes of service. Due to the changing dynamics of network attributes and mobile users’ traffic needs, vertical handovers across heterogeneous networks become highly desirable. Multiple attribute decision making (MADM) techniques offer an efficient approach for ranking competing networks and selecting the best one according to specific quality of service parameters. In this paper, a genetic algorithm (GA) is applied to optimize network attributes’ weighting by emphasizing ranking differences among candidate networks, thereby aiding correct decision making by reducing unnecessary handovers and ranking abnormalities. The performance of the proposed GA-based vertical handover is investigated with typical MADM techniques including Simple Additive Weighting (SAW) and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). The results show that the proposed GA-based weight determination approach reduces the abnormality observed in the conventional SAW and TOPSIS techniques substantially. The results of this paper will help ensuring the application of MADM methods to more dynamic and challenging decision making problems encountered in wireless network.     

面向负载均衡的主动切换

为了解决超密集网络中用户在移动过程中由于小区间干扰和负载不均衡导致的用户服务质量下降的问题,本文研究了一种面向负载均衡的主动切换策略,设计了一种基于双门限的移动切换策略,包含小区内的切换与小区间的切换.通过优化小区内的切换门限,可以最小化系统总资源开销.通过优化小区间的切换门限,能够保证用户实时业务需求的同时均衡网络负...     

Local and Global Handovers Based on In-Band Signaling in Wireless ATM Networks

This paper presents a handover protocol for wireless ATM networks, which makes use of in-band signaling, i.e., of ATM resource management cells, to process network handovers and guarantee the in-sequence and loss-free delivery of the ATM cells containing user data. The goal of the proposed approach is to minimize the modifications of the ATM signaling standard required to overlay user mobility onto the fixed network infrastructure, and provide for a gradual upgrade of the fixed network to handle mobility. The proposed protocol handles both local handovers, in which the connection access point needs not migrate to a new ATM local exchange, and global handovers, in which the connection access point must migrate to a new local exchange. The handover scheme is devised so as to grant in-sequence delivery of cells. The performance of the network during handover is analyzed in case of connections requiring loss-free operation. The considered performance figures are the cell transmission delay introduced by the handover and the cell buffering requirements posed to the network. The behavior of the proposed protocol in presence of multiple handovers is studied via simulation, while a simple analytical method is derived for the performance evaluation of a single handover in isolation.     

Simulation of handover conditions for cellular radio systems

A computer model has been used to study the effects of handover in a cellular radio system. Three parameters are used to represent the radio propagation conditions including fading, which can give rise to multiple handovers on a single crossing of the cell boundary. Means for reducing unnecessary handovers are discussed.     

Integrating RFID and WLAN for indoor positioning and IP movement detection

Location awareness in an indoor environment and wireless access to Internet applications are major research areas towards the overwhelming success of wireless and mobile communications. However, the unpredictable indoor radio propagation and handover latency due to node mobility are the main challenging issues that need to be addressed. For tackling efficiently both problems of indoor localization and handover management, we propose combining key benefits of two outstanding wireless technologies, i.e. radio frequency identification (RFID) and a wireless local area network (WLAN) infrastructure. WLANs, such as IEEE 802.11 (WiFi), are now very common in many indoor environments for providing wireless communication among WiFi-enabled devices by accessing an Access Point (infrastructure mode) or through peer to peer connections (ad hoc mode). However, the small cell size of the Access Points (APs) in a WiFi-based network drives the need for frequent handovers leading to increased latency. RFID is an emerging technology consisting of two basic components, a tag and a reader, and its main purpose is the automatic identification of tagged objects by a reader. However, in the presence of multiple readers, RFID suffers from the so-called reader collision problem, mainly due to the inability for direct communication among them. In this paper, we propose a hybrid RFID and WLAN system; the RFID technology is employed for collecting information that is used for both localization and handover management within the WLAN, whereas the WLAN itself is utilized for controlling and coordinating the RFID reading process. In our system architecture, tag IDs of a RFID tag deployment are correlated with both location and topology information in order to determine the position and predict the next subnetwork of a Mobile Node (MN) with a reader attached to its mobile device. The role of the WLAN is to coordinate the readers when accessing the RFID channel for retrieving tags?? IDs, hence compensating the persisting RFID collision problem among multiple readers. Numerical results based on extensive simulations validate the efficiency of the proposed hybrid system in providing accurate and time efficient localization and reducing the IP handover latency.     

Handover Trigger Based on Frame Retransmission Trend in Mobile IPv6

The basic reason of handover is to stay connected to the Internet with the intention of reducing connection quality deterioration. In a ubiquitous network, mobile nodes often perform handovers to stay connected to the Internet. These mobile nodes sometimes suffer from performance degradation during handover due to radio interference and reduction of signal strength. Therefore, we identified two goals in our paper. The first goal of this paper is to prove that trend based handover triggering mechanisms are better indicators of link going down as compared to threshold based handover triggering mechanisms. The second goal of this paper is to propose our idea of using frame retransmission trend in triggering handovers in order to achieve improved communication quality performance. In our work, we compared signal strength and frame retransmission as the handover decision criterion by means of simulations. Finally we present the effectiveness of our proposed frame retransmission trend as the handover decision criterion to achieve improved communication quality.     

Predictive link trigger mechanism for seamless handovers in heterogeneous wireless networks

Effective and timely link‐layer trigger mechanisms can significantly influence the handover performance. The handover process will not perform the correct decision and execution unless adequate and timely link‐layer trigger information is delivered. In this paper, a predictive link trigger mechanism for seamless horizontal and vertical handovers in heterogeneous wireless networks is proposed. Unlike previous link trigger algorithms based on pre‐defined signal level thresholds, the link layer triggers in this study are adaptively and timely fired in accordance with the network conditions. Firstly, the time required to perform a handover is estimated based on the neighboring network conditions. Secondly, the time to trigger a Link_Going_Down to initiate a handover is determined using a least mean square linear prediction in which the prediction interval (k_h) is dynamically determined based on the estimated handover time. An upper bound for the packet loss rate during a handover is derived for a Gaussian shadowing channel. A manner in which this approach can be applied to IEEE 802.21 is shown in media independent handover scenarios. Simulation results of the proposed predictive link triggering mechanism show that it provides a timely proactive handover. The packet loss rate observed in a Gaussian shadowing channel remains low during a handover. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An efficient handover decision method based on frame retransmission and data rate for multi-rate WLANs

To enhance the communication performance at handover between multi-rate WLANs, we propose a new handover decision method that can be applied to our previously reported handover management scheme, which handled a handover by utilizing two WLAN interfaces (IFs) through cross-layer collaboration between layer 2 and layer 4. It should be noted that we here propose a new handover decision scheme for traversing between multi-rate WLANs, while our previous decision scheme works only in fixed-rate WLANs. In this paper, to treat a handover between multi-rate WLANs, we employ two kinds of information: (1) the most frequently used data rate (MFDR) for assessing the stable communication performance of a multi-rate WLAN, and (2) the frame retransmission ratio (FRR) for assessing its exact communication performance. The MFDR enables us to estimate the area where we should start handover. If the MFDRs of two interfaces are same in the area, the FRR allows us to compare the wireless condition on the two interfaces precisely to give an optimal handover point. Through simulation experiments, we show that our proposed scheme certainly estimates an appropriate handover point as a result of multi-path transmission (s), thereby providing handover successfully. That is, the proposed method can determine handover at an optimal point depending on the various distances between access points, the mobile node (MN) velocity, and the MN moving pattern. Moreover, our proposed scheme prevents the redundant network load caused by multi-path transmission as much as possible, thereby providing the ideal TCP communication performance.     

Energy‐efficient network selection with mobility pattern awareness in an integrated WiMAX and WiFi network

To provide wireless Internet access, WiFi networks have been deployed in many regions such as buildings and campuses. However, WiFi networks are still insufficient to support ubiquitous wireless service due to their narrow coverage. One possibility to resolve this deficiency is to integrate WiFi networks with the wide‐range WiMAX networks. Under such an integrated WiMAX and WiFi network, how to conduct energy‐efficient handovers is a critical issue. In this paper, we propose a handover scheme with geographic mobility awareness (HGMA), which considers the historical handover patterns of mobile devices. HGMA can conserve the energy of handovering devices from three aspects. First, it prevents mobile devices from triggering unnecessary handovers according to their received signal strength and moving speeds. Second, it contains a handover candidate selection method for mobile devices to intelligently select a subset of WiFi access points or WiMAX relay stations to be scanned. Therefore, mobile devices can reduce their network scanning and thus save their energy. Third, HGMA prefers mobile devices staying in their original WiMAX or WiFi networks. This can prevent mobile devices from consuming too much energy on interface switching. In addition, HGMA prefers the low‐tier WiFi network over the WiMAX network and guarantees the bandwidth requirements of handovering devices. Simulation results show that HGMA can save about 59– 80% of energy consumption of a handover operation, make mobile devices to associate with WiFi networks with 16–62% more probabilities, and increase about 20–61% of QoS satisfaction ratio to handovering devices. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Efficient handover measurement technique for small‐cell networks using a virtual cell synchronization signal

A small‐cell network (SCN) constructed by splitting a macro‐cell into numerous small cells using an active antenna array system is studied. A synchronization signal appropriate for the SCN, virtually generated by an eNodeB with 3D beamforming, is proposed for efficient handover in SCNs. The virtual cell synchronization signal (VCSS) carries a macro‐cell ID (MCID) and virtual‐cell ID (VCID) in a hierarchical manner, allowing us to distinguish between an intra‐cell handover (virtual cell handover within a cell without changing the serving eNodeB) and inter‐cell handover (virtual cell handovers across cells while changing the serving eNodeB) in SCNs. Using the signal metrics obtained by the VCSS, an efficient handover measurement technique is proposed which can significantly reduce the processing time and overhead by distinguishing between the intra‐cell/inter‐cell handovers. The performance of the proposed technique is evaluated by simulating two different deployment scenarios of LTE‐based SCN with 3D beamforming. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

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。     

UMTS中切换的系统开销

本文首先建立了切换模型,并给出最常用的UMTS切换算法。在切换模型和切换算法的基础上,提出了UMTS硬切换和软切换的瞬时系统开销和平均系统开销的数学分析方法,推导出了两种切换的瞬时和平均系统开销的数学表达式。最后,通过仿真切换的系统开销的数学表达式,分析和对比了随着不同的切换门限变化和随着移动台在小区中不同空间位置变化,硬切换和软切换的瞬时系统开销的变化规律,并对比了UMTS硬切换和软切换的在整个切换过程中的平均系统开销的相对大小。     

An efficient approach for DVB-H handover in DVB-H/UMTS hybrid networks

Handover in Digital Video Broadcasting for Handhelds （DVB-H） aims to provide continuous mobile broadcasting services when a user is traveling through cell boundaries. A good handover control can improve the power efficiency and gain much better reception quality. This letter provides a novel approach for DVB-H handover based on DVB-H/Universal Mobile Telecommunications System （UMTS） hybrid network, which moves the main handover function from the terminals to the networks, so that it reduces the operation complexity of the terminals and increases the power saving. When the terminal can not receive the DVB-H signal in the transmission shadow areas or because of some other reasons, the UMTS networks may offer the same service to users to make the service continuous. As the UMTS networks have the topology of the DVB-H networks, by communicating with the terminals, the UMTS networks can help the terminals to predict the handover, and avoid unnecessary handover.     

A hybrid handover protocol for local area wireless ATM networks

While handovers of voice calls in a wide area mobile environment are well understood, handovers of multi-media traffic in a local area mobile environment is still in its early stage of investigation. Unlike the public wireless networks, handovers for multi-media Wireless LANs (WLANs) have special requirements. In this paper, the problems and challenges faced in a multi-media WLAN environment are outlined and a multi-tier wireless cell clustering architecture is introduced. Design issues for multi-media handovers are specified and a fast, continuous and efficient hybrid handover protocol is proposed. The protocol is scalable and supports source and destination mobile handovers in a mutually exclusive manner. Crossover switch (CX) discovery is also introduced to support fast inter-cluster handovers with consideration given to Mobile Quality of Service (M-QoS). The resulting wireless ATM LAN exhibits a distributed mobile location management, call admission control and handover management architecture. A prototype of the proposed handover protocol is implemented into a Cambridge Fairisle ATM switch and the results of handovers for a single Mobile Host (MH) with a single on-going connection are evaluated. It was found that implementing transport mobility for a wireless ATM environment is not practical as the cell re-routing function changes the traffic characteristics and is not scalable to increasing cell rate and to the number of mobile connections. The data-link layer mobility implementation however, is found to work well. The protocol provides symmetric data disruption to traffic flows in both directions and up to seventy-five intra-cluster handovers can be supported in a second. Throughout the experiment, cells arrive in sequence with no cell loss observed during the handover, up to the capacity limit of the ATM switch. Finally, zig-zag handovers and handovers for a single MH with multiple on-going unicast connections are performed in order to evaluate the robustness and performance of the protocol under different MHs' migration and communication environment.Parts of this paper appeared in the ACM First International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MOBICOM'95), Berkeley, California, November 1995 as The Design & Implementation of A Hybrid Handover Protocol For Multi-Media Wireless LANs.C-K Toh is supported by a King's College Cambridge External Research Studentship and a Cambridge Commonwealth Trust Scholarship.