An Insight towards Trends and Effectiveness of Vertical Handoff Mechanism

With increasing technological advancement of mobile computing and mobile networks, there is an increasing concern about a sustainable vertical handoff mechanism for large scale heterogeneous networks. In existing communication technology, different types of networking protocols often pose a challenge in rendering an effective communication when the mobile user moves from one to other forms of wireless networks (3G, 4G, WiMax, GPRS, CDMA, WLAN, etc). One of the significant factors to ensure an effective handoff mechanism is ensure a faster authentication process handling all the complexities of heterogeneous network. Hence, this paper discusses about the significant research attempts being done to enhance the vertical handoff performance with respect to handling complexities of heterogeneity, ensuring faster authentication process. The paper also discusses the existing literatures towards study of WLAN and CDMA network and finally the paper discusses about the significant research gaps identified by in-depth analysis of the outcomes of the existing literatures.