On the Use of Ad Hoc Cooperation for Seamless Vertical Handoff and Its Performance Evaluation

Abstract

In heterogeneous network environments, it is very important for users to provide seamless services while satisfying quality-of-service, regardless of the connected access network. In this paper, we apply a concept of ad hoc cooperation for the vertical handoff in the heterogeneous network. For the seamless vertical handoff of mobile nodes, a neighbor ad hoc node assists some parts of the handoff procedures requiring large latency, such as authentication and IP registration procedures. Details of the vertical handover operation using the ad hoc cooperation are presented and its performance is evaluated. Numerical results show that the proposed vertical handoff procedure decreases the service disruption time and the probability of packet loss, compared with the conventional handoff methods that do not consider the cooperation of ad hoc node.