A Scheme for Graceful Vertical Handover in Heterogeneous Overlay Networks

We present a graceful vertical handover scheme that provides graceful performance degradation during an upward vertical handover in heterogeneous overlay networks. This scheme harmonizes the functions performed by different layers, i.e., from the link layer to the application layer, and consequently smoothens the change in the throughput and reduces data losses in the network during a handover. By implementing the scheme in the ns-2 simulator, we present the results of the TCP performance with the graceful handover, which is significantly better than the performance without one