Improved Association and Disassociation Scheme for Enhanced WLAN Handover and VHO

The number of mobile devices and wireless connections is significantly increasing. Among many wireless protocol types, wireless local area networks (WLANs) are expected to support a significant number of devices. Due to this reason, effective and efficient handover (HO) and vertical handover (VHO) support for WLAN mobile devices is important. A significant improvement in quality of service (QoS) can be obtained by reducing the association and disassociation interruption time for user equipment (UE) servicing real-time applications during WLAN HO and VHO operations. Based on this focus, this paper investigates the problem of using only the received signal strength indicator (RSSI) in HO and VHO decisions, which is what the current IEEE 802.11 based WLAN systems use. Experimental results presented in this paper demonstrate that only using the RSSI results in significant interruption time during HO to another WLAN access point (AP) or to a cellular base station during VHO. Therefore, in this paper, an improved association and disassociation scheme that can reduce the data interruption time (DIT) and improve the throughput performance is proposed.

[1]  Samuel Pierre,et al.  On the impact of soft vertical handoff on optimal voice admission control in PCF-based WLANs loosely coupled to 3G networks , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.

[2]  Massimiliano Laddomada,et al.  On the Optimization of the IEEE 802.11 DCF: A Cross-Layer Perspective , 2010, Int. J. Digit. Multim. Broadcast..

[3]  Doug Young Suh,et al.  Reducing handover delays for seamless multimedia service in IEEE 802.11 networks , 2014 .

[4]  Hannes Hartenstein,et al.  Stochastic Properties of the Random Waypoint Mobility Model , 2004, Wirel. Networks.

[5]  Yuguang Fang,et al.  Threshold optimization for rate adaptation algorithms in IEEE 802.11 WLANs , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.

[6]  Mohammad Saquib,et al.  Vertical Handover Analysis for Voice over WLAN/Cellular Network , 2010, 2010 IEEE International Conference on Communications.

[7]  Yang Xiao,et al.  Refinements on IEEE 802.11 Distributed Coordination Function Modeling Approaches , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology.

[8]  Tracy Camp,et al.  A survey of mobility models for ad hoc network research , 2002, Wirel. Commun. Mob. Comput..

[9]  Yi Pan,et al.  Improving Performance of QoS Applications for Wireless Networks , 2015, Int. J. Distributed Sens. Networks.

[10]  Theodore S. Rappaport,et al.  Wireless communications - principles and practice , 1996 .

[11]  Iqbal Gondal,et al.  Multi-Dimensional Adaptive SINR Based Vertical Handoff for Heterogeneous Wireless Networks , 2008, IEEE Communications Letters.

[12]  Gabriel-Miro Muntean,et al.  MBE: Model-Based Available Bandwidth Estimation for IEEE 802.11 Data Communications , 2012, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology.

[13]  Mohammad Saquib,et al.  Performance Evaluation of WLAN/Cellular Media Access for Mobile Voice Users under Random Mobility Models , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.