A Predictive Handover Initiation Mechanism in Next Generation Wireless Networks

Next generation wireless networks are envisaged to be an integration of different wireless networks and demand the ability of users to move from one network domain to another network domain seamlessly. Also these networks require superior handover techniques to provide ubiquitous access to roaming users with maximum network resource utilization. In order to fulfill these requirements, it is essential to select an appropriate time to initiate handover. The handover procedure can be completed before link down only if we have prior information about necessity of handover as well as availability of target network. The link down event and link up event provide information about handover requirement and resource availability respectively. In this paper, a predictive handover initiation mechanism is proposed to select an appropriate time to start handover procedure. Also the prediction initiation time is made adaptive to avoid link failure in high velocity applications which was fixed in conventional algorithms. MATLAB Simulation results show that the proposed mechanism decreases the probability of false handover initiation by 25% and unnecessary handover probability by 35% when compared with existing handover mechanisms in different network overlapping environments.