Potential of cooperative information for vertical handover decision algorithms

In the near term, vehicles will be connected with each other and to centralized off-board servers to provide automotive services. In this paper we analyze existing heterogeneous network selection algorithms. It is shown that the developed algorithm for network selection with additional cooperative information is well suited to improve the handover decisions compared to reference handover algorithms without additional cooperative information. The reference algorithms include a received signal strength (RSS), a Fuzzy logic- and an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) based handover decision algorithm excluding supplemental cooperative information. A detailed, simulation based, analysis of the perceived quality of service (QoS) and a cost optimization has been performed for the developed vertical handover decision algorithm (VHDA) using AHP with cooperative information.