Enhancing MIH for optimum network performance and handovers in heterogeneous networks

In this poster we present an enhanced version of IEEE 802.21 Media Independent Handovers services (MIH) to optimized the network and handover performance. We added features and components in MIH architecture to enable the quick delivery of information to Mobile Nodes (MNs) to optimize the handover process. We added caches and database within Point of Access (PoA) and Media Independent Information Service (MIIS) respectfully to store Dynamic Network Information (DNI) and introduce timely updates mechanism for efficient distribution DNI among PoAs and MIIS to improve the network performance. We also manage to decrease the unnecessary Handovers (HOs) and enable the MNs to select the best candidate network during HO through efficient and effective decision making process which not only consider DNI but also application and user context information. We simulated our proposed architecture in NS-2 simulator and compared its performance with standard MIH. Our proposed architecture outperformed standard MIH in different performance aspects.