Introducing Intelligent Vertical Handover in Next Generation Networks

The vision of next generation networks is an all-IP network supporting heterogeneous access technologies such as WLAN, UMTS and WiMax for the purpose of providing the mobile user with roaming capability across different networks. To enable this type of mobility known as vertical handover (HO), a special mobility management is proposed in order for the handover to be performed with service continuity and minimum QoS degradation. The proposed Intelligent Handover Management (IHOM) scheme consists of "guiding" the HO request to the best network capable of providing the required QoS parameters. The processing of the HO is based on an anticipated scenario where the HO decision parameters are compared to a pre-defined threshold in order for the HO to be guided accordingly.