Energy-Efficient Handoff Decision Algorithms for CSH-MU Mobility Solution

Abstract

Vertical handoff (VHO) is the key feature to increase the seamless services availability (i.e., cloud services) in a heterogeneous network environment that especially plays an important role in emergency use cases for reliable information retrieval. For precise handoff decisions, latest proposed vertical handoff decision algorithms (VHDA) are, however, too complex and do not consider the restricted access to decision metrics of mobile phones with limited system resources. For addressing this issue and to benefit earlier from seamless service provisioning, we present feasible client based VHDA solutions ensuring context-aware QoS (i.e., high throughput, low power consumption) for specific use cases. Unlike related approaches, our solutions run completely locally on mobile phones without any required modifications on network side. In terms of performance analysis, we design a comprehensive simulation model for comparing the suggested VHDA solutions with different complexity levels. Moreover, we analyze the impact of an energy model, which is derived from experimental measurements, on handoff decision quality and the improvement of battery usage. Simulation results illustrate that VHDAs with energy model enhance the QoS of handoff decisions in terms of high throughput and low power consumption compared to a less approach.