Performance Trade-Offs of a IEEE 802.21-Based Vertical Handover Decision Algorithm under Different Network Conditions

Wireless technologies have been widely deployed in the last decade making users demand for continuous connectivity. Users not only demand being attached to a network, but possibly to the one with the highest performance, or at least to a network able to fulfill their requirements. To choose the best network among different candidates, the IEEE 802.21 standard has been developed. In this paper we aim at demonstrating the viability of performing Vertical Handover (VHO) processes based on the IEEE 802.21 protocol. To do so, we have evaluated a VHO strategy which considers network availability and maximum data rate in order to choose the best network candidate among the Wi-Fi, the WiMAX, and the UMTS. Moreover, throughout a set of experiments, we have also evaluated the maximum performance of the available networks.