Reducing Power Consumption in Network Discovery with Motion Detection in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

Seamless handoff is critical to providing high-quality services for mobile users. Before handoff, a mobile terminal (MT) must be aware of the impending handoff and determine what other wireless networks are available in time. In the network discovery stage, an MT must activate its interfaces for base station search, association, AAA (authentication, authorization, accounting), address acquisition, and so on. Therefore, if insufficient time is available for the MT to perform these procedures, then the connection will be disrupted. However, frequent interface activation can cause considerable battery drain. This paper presents a network discovery algorithm with motion detection, NDMD, to solve these problems. NDMD can simply use the received signal strength (RSS) to predict a user´s motion without the assistance of a positioning system. Based on the predicted moving behavior, an MT can perform network discovery in time to reduce handoff dropping rate and prevent unnecessary activation of its interfaces to save the battery power. Simulation results show that NDMD can effectively detect user behavior, reduce power consumption in network discovery, and improve handoff quality.