A Generic Analytical Modelling Approach for Performance Evaluation of the Handover Schemes in Heterogeneous Environments

In recent years, there has been an increased interest in the integration of different technologies in heterogeneous environments. Modelling heterogeneous systems is a complex task and handover schemes should consider issues such as network coverage, mobility, and Quality of Service (QoS). Analytical models are useful to deal with this complexity. This paper presents a generic framework to model handover in heterogeneous environments for performance evaluation of different handover schemes. The model developed considers mobility of the users, coverage radius of the networks as well as decision making probabilities about handover between the two networks. The interaction between cellular mobile technologies is considered and handover between a WLAN and a cellular system is analysed using the proposed model. Two stage open networks can be used to model this kind of integrated systems. The cellular mobile technologies are modelled as a multi-channel queuing system while the WLAN is depicted as a single channel queuing system, both with finite buffers. The exact spectral expansion method is employed to solve the models. Simulation is also employed for the proposed systems and used for validation of the accuracy of the proposed models. Numerical results are presented for mean queue length and blocking probabilities for each system. The results of this study show that QoS measures of such systems can be evaluated efficiently and accurately, using the proposed analytical model and its solution. In addition, it can be used as a framework in heterogeneous environments and can also be adapted to various types of networks in interaction.