A Velocity-Based Bicasting Handover Scheme for 4G Mobile Systems

Abstract

We propose a velocity-based bicasting handover scheme for the efficient utilization of backhaul network resources in fourth-generation mobile systems. The original bicasting handover scheme adopts the mechanism of holding the data of a mobile station (MS) in all potential target base stations in advance, before the actual handover execution of the MS. The scheme minimizes the packet transmission delay caused by handover and achieves the goal of seamless connectivity, however, it results in an aggressive consumption of the backhaul network resources. Moreover, as the scheme gets widely adopted for high data rate real-time services and the demand for these services grows, the amount of the resources consumed due to the bicasting will increase tremendously. In this paper, we present a new bicasting handover scheme that reduces the data bicasting time, thereby improving the backhaul network resource utilization. Our scheme exploits the velocity parameter of MS and introduces a novel concept of bicasting threshold determined for the specific mobile speed groups. Simulations prove the efficiency of our scheme over the original one in overcoming the aggressive resource consumption at the backhaul network.