Smart Network Selection and Packet Loss Improvement during Handover in Heterogeneous Environment

Abstract : Seamless Handover between networks in heterogeneous environment is essential to guarantee end-to-end QoS for mobile users. A key requirement is the ability to select the next best network. Currently, the implementation of the IEEE 802.21 standard by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) considers only the signal strength as a parameter to determine the best network. In this paper, we propose including additional parameters such as available bandwidth, mobile node speed and type of network during selecting a new network to improve the QoS for mobile user's application. The results of the experiments that we performed using Network Simulator show that there is a need for a new framework taking into account these parameters to guide network selection process during handover and to provide mobile users with QoS guarantee.