New Manhattan distance‐based fuzzy MADM method for the network selection

Abstract

Mobile devices are increasingly developing, and more sophisticated wireless networks areavailable as well. Users nowadays want to access the best available technologyanytime, following the always best-connected concept, which leads often tovertical handovers. It means changing the wireless access type and is animportant research area in the next generation of networking. In contrast, whenchanging the point of attachment while using the same wireless technology, it isa ‘horizontal handover’. When handing over the communications, the transfershould be ‘seamless’, i.e. it should not cause delays or break the session anddisconnect the user. Indeed, the vertical handover process is continuouslyimproving, especially the network selection step, which is the most crucial one. Naturally, multi-attribute decision-making (MADM) methods fit this kind ofissues, but they still produce some undesirable results sometimes, due tometrics imprecision and vagueness. The authors propose in this study a newnetwork selection scheme, combining the fuzzy logic and a new MADM method, namedfuzzy Manhattan distance to the ideal alternative. They compare throughsimulations this new technique, with the best known MADM methods, as well aswith fuzzy grey relational analysis, to evaluate its performance in the samecontext.