Handoff management in wireless data networks using topography-aware mobility prediction

摘要

In this paper, we introduce a Handoff prediction and enhancement scheme (HOPES) that aims to explore the use of prediction techniques in mobility managements in order to improve the end-to-end traffic quality. The fundamental difference between HOPES and other predictive mobility management techniques is that HOPES uses topography-aware predictive approach that combines the mobile host's movement history, current state, and the topography of the cells. The proposed architecture provides the network with timely information necessary to proactively respond to user movements instead of passively handling it after it happens.The effectiveness of this work is demonstrated through a comparative study that included other mobility prediction models. The comparison involves monitoring of several performance metrics to asses the end-to-end traffic improvement achieved from the proposed model. These metrics include; Packet Loss, Data Delivery Ratio, Reserved Bandwidth, Retransmitted Packets per Received Packet, and TCP Session Duration. The results obtained for HOPES show a significant improvement in traffic quality without sacrificing the utilization of network resources. This can be attributed to the nature of the topography-aware mobility modeling and prediction suggested by HOPES which is more accurate in predicting mobility patterns when topographical features have impact on mobile users' movements. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.