An agent-based approach for vertical handover in heterogeneous wireless networks

One of the vision of next generation networks is an all-IP network supporting heterogeneous access technologies for the purpose of providing the mobile user with roaming capability across different networks. To enable this type of mobility known as vertical handover (VHO), an intelligent technique is needed in order to perform the service continuity. This paper presents a multi-agent based approach for the VHO. We propose to introduce the agents in the mobile nodes (MNs) and Access Points (APs) to collect the necessary information from the environment. Based on this information, agents will anticipate the handover in order to reduce the handover latency. We have defined three behaviors (Network Monitoring, Decision, and Network Selection) for the agents that will assist us in anticipating the handover.