Vertical Handoff Analysis between WLAN and 3G Networks under an Adaptive QoS Control

摘要

It is with no doubt that recent trends indicate that cellular networks based on the 3G standards and wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) coexist to offer multimedia services to end users. However, while users roam throughout this heterogeneous network, they should be automatically and transparently switched from one access technology to another such as from 802.11 networks to 3G ones, depending upon the availability of resources and QoS requirements, without any user intervention. The transfer of data between the two above named networks presents some challenges and new requirements such as an integrated architecture of WLAN-UMTS and vertical handover support adaptive designed QoS. This paper makes three major contributions. Firstly, we address an integrated architecture for WLAN and 3G networks. Secondly, we propose adaptive QoS components and lastly, this paper focuses on UMTS/WLAN vertical handover analysis under our Adaptive QoS approach. OPNET™ Modeler 11.5 simulation results indicate that the adaptive multimedia framework surpasses the non adaptive approach in terms of lower handoff dropping probability and call blocking probability in performance.