An approach to energy efficient vertical handover technique for heterogeneous networks

Energy consumption is critical issue in heterogeneous networks comprising of proliferation of different types of wireless networks. The next generation mobile terminals are equipped with multiple interfaces to associate themselves with one or more networks at the same time. Vertical handover techniques facilitate the user to have ubiquitous access with desired quality of service but increased energy consumption with time. Thus energy aware vertical handover techniques are highly desirable in present era of heterogeneous networks. In this work, an approach to energy efficient vertical handover technique has been suggested and analyzed for different traffic classes. The proposed approach is based on vector normalized preferred performance based VIKOR algorithm (V-VPP) for performing handover. It resulted in lesser energy consumption in the presence of three interfaces WLAN, WIMAX and cellular interface operating simultaneously.