Effects of channel carrying strategies on handoffs in DCA-based mobile cellular networks

Dynamic channel assignment (DCA) schemes can provide a more efficient solution than fixed channel assignment (FCA) schemes for future mobile cellular networks to meet the requirements of the ever-growing number of mobile users. This is due to due to its better adaptability to unevenly-distributed and changing traffic load. However, it is observed that in DCA with the soft handoff policy, a handoff call will suffer a higher dropping probability than the blocking probability of a new call in the case of no handoff prioritization. This is definitely undesirable from the user´s point of view. The channel carrying approach, which allows a mobile station to continue to use its currently occupied channel when it handoffs to a new cell, can easily change the stated situation above. We investigate two channel carrying strategies through simulations, and find that the one called “channel carrying last” performs better