Signal Strength Ratio Based Vertical Handoff Decision Algorithms in Integrated Heterogeneous Networks

Abstract

In this paper, we propose the signal strength ratio (SSR) based vertical handoff (VHO) algorithms and the averaged received signal strength (ARSS) based VHO algorithms for integrated networks of wireless local area network (WLAN) and 3G network. The performance of our proposed VHO algorithms with hysteresis and dwell timer approaches has been investigated for two different topologies of integrated heterogeneous network. Two different network topologies consider two different types of radio cell arrangement. A mobile terminal (MT) is moving within the coverage area of WLAN and 3G with constant velocity. The received signal strength at the MT of interest is measured at different sampling instant. The received signal strength with other additional parameters is used to determine the condition of VHO. We evaluate the decision delay, and the number of vertical handoffs between WLAN and 3G network using the proposed VHO algorithms. We compare the performance of our proposed VHO algorithms with existing RSS based VHO algorithm. Our proposed SSR and ARSS based VHO algorithms provide less decision delay as compared to existing RSS based VHO algorithm. Further, ARSS with dwell timer based VHO algorithm provides better performance than other VHO algorithms.