Optimal dimensioning of handover buffers in wireless ATM networks

Among the numerous challenges in providing mobility management in wireless ATM (W-ATM) networks, handover protocols are receiving a great deal of attention, since a careful design of the handover procedure is necessary to guarantee the required quality of service to mobile users at an acceptable cost. For example, in a number of proposed W-ATM architectures, the handover procedure requires cell buffering in the network nodes to obtain virtually loss-free and in-sequence cell delivery to end user. This requirement may have a significant impact on the overall cost of the system. The paper analyzes a particular type of handover procedure that requires cell buffering only at the destination base station. Performance results based on an analytical model are presented, that can be used to accurately determine the minimum size of the handover buffers as a function of several system parameters and the cell loss ratio tolerated by the application