Handover Incentives for WLANs with Overlapping Coverage

It is well known that in IEEE 802.11 networks, the assignment of low-rate and high-rate users to the same access point significantly degrades the performance of the high-rate users. Our objective is to investigate the implications of the above performance degradation on the incentives for handover between 802.11 wireless local area networks with overlapping coverage. Our focus is on the incentives for supporting handovers, due solely to the improved performance handovers yield for both wireless networks. To study the phenomenon and estimate the potential gain of such handovers, we propose a simple model that predicts the throughput of each access point in different cases. The throughput approximation model can indicate when the handover is expected to be beneficial, and can be used in a handover acceptance policy. Simulation of the proposed procedure suggests that the model is accurate and that there are significant throughput gains for both wireless networks.