A QoS-aware vertical handoff algorithm based on predictive network information.

In converged heterogeneous wireless networks, vertical handoff is an important issue in radio resource management and occurs when an end user switches from one network to another (e.g., from wireless local area network to wideband code division multiple access). Efficient vertical handoff should allocate network resources efficiently and maintain good quality of service (QoS) for the end users. The objective of this work is to determine conditions under which vertical handoff can be performed. The channel usage situation of each access network is formulated as a birth-death process with the objective of predicting the available bandwidth and the blocking probability. A reward function is used to capture the network bandwidth and the blocking probability is expressed as a cost function. An end user will access the certain network which maximizes the total function defined as the combination of the reward function and the cost function. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can significantly improve the network performance, including higher bandwidth for end users and lower new call blocking and handoff call blocking probability for networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]