The SA-based group handoff scheme for heterogeneous wireless networks in M2M communications

A group of multi-mode wearable devices or mobile terminals (MTs) may be carried by the same vehicle and then perform group handover during the movement within heterogeneous networks. However, it is a challenging work to determine a proper target network which is good for both MTs and the network provider. This paper presents a simulated-annealing-based group handover decision scheme to reduce the group handover blocking ratio, decrease the number of handover, balance the traffic load between networks, and ensure the target quality of service (QoS) requirements of MTs. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can reduce the group handover blocking ratio efficiently and balance the load. Besides, when the number of group MTs is not quite large, the number of handover can be reduced and the QoS requirements can be fulfilled.