Assessing the Handover Approaches for Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

We are currently witnessing the coexistence of a multitude of radio access networks allowing the users to connect to the federative all-IP core network, and then further to the Internet. In this heterogeneous environment we should strive to be "best connected, anytime, anywhere". We have concentrating our research on distributing the handover mechanisms over multiple entities within networks and terminals; as far as we know, there is no comprehensive work to assess the optimal places where the vertical handover decisions should be made. We have developed a simulator that allows the dynamic construction of a handover decision chain for each application\´s flow in order to compare the main handover approaches: network-assisted, network-controlled, and terminal-controlled.