Towards an Architecture for Mobility Management and Resource Control

In 4G networks, various wireless access technologies will be integrated into a heterogeneous network based on an IP core network infrastructure. Thus, numerous works focus on mobility and vertical handover management to allow multiple-interfaces mobile terminals to roam seamlessly between these access networks. The different handoff schemes can be classified into three approaches according to where the decision to handoff is made: within the terminal, the network or thanks to a collaboration between them. However, these approaches still present some drawbacks; namely the problem of resource management whenever the handover is controlled by the mobile terminal (MT) and the problem of scalability and complexity whenever the handover is rather decided by the network. In this paper, we propose a new approach that explicitly takes into account management requirements, the current resource usage and user preferences. Furthermore, our solution provides means to select the "best-suited" network for each application according to its expectations in terms of QoS. A feasibility study of our solution is then conducted on a single mobile terminal by using typical scenarios and applying various algorithms to evaluate their behaviors.