A Flexible Handoff Prioritization Scheme for Improved Quality of Service in Mobile Networks

Peter E Ugege ,Akhigbe_Mudu Thursday E ,Saka M A ,Akee Shakirat A

doi:10.7176/jiea/11-1-03

Abstract

Efficient handoff prioritization schemes make mobile networks to perform better. However, most existing schemes have the common characteristics of reducing the call drop probability and increasing the call block probability; this decreases the general network performance. The reservation of channels for the use of handoff calls alone has not proved to be an efficient approach to optimally utilize the network limited channel resources. These approaches are such that even when the reserved channels are not in use, new calls could still get blocked if there are no channels among the shared channels to allocate to the new calls. In trying to maintain an improved QoS for handoff calls while ensuring an acceptable QoS for new calls, different methods have been suggested for new calls to access and use the reserved channels while priority is still given to handoff calls since it is more frustrating to have an on-going call dropped than blocking a new call. Network parameters such as call drop probability and traffic intensity had been used separately to determine when new calls could be granted access to use the reserved channels or otherwise. Handoff queuing and other call admission control approaches have also been used. This paper proposes the use of traffic intensity and call drop probability to decide whether the new calls could use the reserved channels or not. Also proposed is the need to keep the number of reserved channels fixed rather than calculating the numbers to reserve per time therefore reducing the computational complexity of the scheme. The simulation results showed an improved QoS for the handoff calls while producing a commensurate improvement for the new calls through a reduced Call drop Probability and call block probability. Keywords: Call block probability, Call drop probability, traffic intensity, handoff prioritization, mobile network DOI: 10.7176/JIEA/11-1-03 Publication date: January 31 st 2021

Highlights

Handoff is the process that handovers an active call from cell to cell as mobile stations moves through the cellular system coverage area
This has brought about the need for more efficient schemes that can adequately provide an acceptable QoS for both handoff calls and new calls in mobile networks
The proposed algorithm gave special consideration to the handoff calls while ensuring as much as possible an acceptable QoS for new calls by not reserving channels for the exclusive use of handoff calls. (Nayak et al, 2015) gave special consideration to the handoff calls by reserving channels exclusively for handoff calls; the number to reserve is calculated and varied per time. (Ali et al, 2016) proposed a zero call dropping probability (CDP)

Summary

Introduction

Handoff is the process that handovers an active call from cell to cell as mobile stations moves through the cellular system coverage area. Efficient handoff mechanism is extremely important because of the need to optimize channel utilization in mobile networks when a user switches between cells (Kaur and Kaur, 2014), (Goswani and Patel, 2014), (Solanki and Rafiq, 2014). Sometimes channels are kept idle waiting to be used for handoff calls even when new calls are being blocked for none availability of frequency resources to allocate for their use (Solanki and Rafiq, 2014), (Asuquo et al, 2014), This has brought about the need for more efficient schemes that can adequately provide an acceptable QoS for both handoff calls and new calls in mobile networks. Such schemes will reduce congestions in mobile networks

Methods

Results

Conclusion