A Hierarchical and Distributed Handover Management Approach for Heterogeneous Networking Environments

There is a wide consensus concerning the fact that future networks will follow the All-IP paradigm. However, for accessing these All-IP networks there are myriads of radio options as we have witnessed a rapid development of several wireless technologies, some of them being complementary while others competing in terms of QoS, security or cost. Within this heterogeneous environment we should strive to be "always best connected", anytime, anywhere. Nonetheless, the ABC concept is quite a generic vision as the actors involved in the access selection process may sometimes have contradictory viewpoints. Thus, to meet the goals of the ABC vision, our work concentrates on distributing the handover decision function over multiple entities within networks and the end-terminals; our approach allows the dynamic construction of a handover decision chain in a hierarchical and distributed manner and for each (user, application\´s flow) 2-tuple; when selecting the "best" access option we take into account comprehensive policies and parameters related to access networks, applications, users and operators.