A smart triggering scheme to reduce service interruption during heterogeneous handovers

Multi-radio devices provide end-users the ability to achieve ubiquitous and seamless connectivity anytime, anywhere across heterogeneous networks. Minimal service disruption while a device roams across networks is key for a successful deployment. Todaypsilas roaming decisions are reactive and traditionally based on thresholds for signal strength or other radio properties, leading to undesirable handover delays. This paper introduces an Intel/BT client architecture to support seamless mobility for multi-radio devices and proposes a novel approach to predict when a device needs to take proactive actions to perform handovers. Significant improvement in reducing service discontinuity time is demonstrated by applying our approach to WiFi and WiMax networks. We also validate the architecture and algorithm benefits using our WiFi/WiMax multi-radio prototype in heterogeneous wireless network environments.