Title: A cost optimisation policy for handoff rerouting

Authors: Rawya Rizk, Randa Atta, Mohammad Ghanbari

Addresses: Electrical Engineering Department, Suez Canal University, Port Said, 42523, Egypt. ' Electrical Engineering Department, Suez Canal University, Port Said, 42523, Egypt. ' School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, University of Essex, Colchester, CO4 3SQ, UK

Abstract: A two-phase handoff protocol has been proposed to support interswitch handoff in Wireless Asynchronous Transfer Mode (WATM) networks. An important issue is the determination of the best time to perform Phase 2. In this paper, it is shown that none of the existing conventional path optimisation policies is optimal at all network situations; hence, a general Cost Optimisation Policy (COP) applicable to a wide range of network conditions is proposed. It is based on the decision whether to exclude Phase 2 or select among the best path optimisation policies for this phase. The proposed policy avoids unnecessary path optimisations and achieves the lowest total expected cost at variable mobility factors and network conditions. A comparison between the proposed policy and conventional path optimisation policies is performed. The numerical results show a significant improvement of the total expected cost over conventional path optimisation policies at all network situations.

Keywords: interswitch handoff; mobile communications; path optimisation; two-phase; wireless asynchronous transfer mode; WATM networks; cost optimisation; handoff rerouting.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMC.2009.025540

International Journal of Mobile Communications, 2009 Vol.7 No.6, pp.715 - 730

Published online: 22 May 2009 *

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