An MDP-based Vertical Handoff Decision Algorithm for Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

摘要

The heterogeneity is one of the key characteristics of the future wireless networks. How to provide terminal users with the best connection anytime and anywhere become more important. In this paper, a vertical handoff decision algorithm for the heterogeneous wireless networks is proposed based on the Markov Decision Process (MDP). First the factors which determine the choices of the wireless networks is discussed in detail. Then the problem is resolved by a Markov decision process with the objective of maximizing the total expected reward per connection. The analytic hierarchy process is used to assign the weight to the reward from every attribute such as the power, mobility, energy etc. The numerical simulations of two different scenes shows that the proposed algorithm can effectively reduce switching times and improve the performance of the handoff in the heterogeneous networks. The comparison among the proposed algorithm and other vertical handoff decision algorithms, such as Simple Additive Weighting (SAW), RSS based algorithm, also shows the better performance of our algorithm.