Travelling Distance Estimation Based Approach to Minimize Unnecessary Handovers

Background: Mobility management is one of the most important challenges in next generation wireless networks (NGWNs) as it enables users to move across geographic boundaries of wireless networks. Nowadays, mobile communications have heterogeneous wireless networks offering variable coverage and Quality of Service (QoS). The availability of alternatives generates a problem of occurrence of unnecessary handoff that results in wastage of network resources. To avoid this, an efficient algorithm needs to be developed to minimize the number of handoffs. Conventionally, whenever a wireless local area network (WLAN) connectivity is available, the mobile node switch from cellular network to wireless local area network (WLAN) network to gain maximum use of high bandwidth and low cost of wireless local area network (WLAN) as much as possible. But to maintain call quality and minimum number of call failure, a considerable proportion of these handovers should be determined. Our algorithm makes the handoff to wireless local area network (WLAN) only when the predicted travelling distance inside the wireless local area network (WLAN) is larger than a threshold value. Methods: A novel handoff necessity estimation approach based on travelling distance and an optimum handoff target network selection algorithm. Results: Through MATLAB simulation, we show that our algorithm minimize the probability of unnecessary handoff, probability of handoff failure, and selects an optimum target network from the available network based on bandwidth, cost, and power consumption. Conclusion: It is able to improve handover performance and user’s satisfaction level by offering the best quality of services to user all the time through optimum target network selection.