System Design and Implementation of Seamless Handover Support Enabling Real-Time Telemetry Applications for Highly Mobile Users

IEEE 802.11 is one of the most mature WLAN technologies and system components are available at very low cost. This makes it prevealing to reuse 802.11 (hardware) components for system designs apart from traditional WLAN application areas and environments. This paper presents a novel predictive fast handover protocol enabling seamless handover support for real-time telemetry applications for highly mobile users. The employed system architecture is based on 802.11 commercial off-the-shelf components with a modified firmware. We conduct a performance evaluation using a proof-of-concept implementation. The employed methodology and metric is for the first time in strict accordance the proposed approach of the IEEE standard on wireless performance prediction. Results show that the handover delay is below 1 ms.

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