Performance evaluation of a new fast path re-routing for intercluster handoff scheme in wireless ATM networks

Recently, a two-phase handoff protocol has been adopted to support the rerouting of the connection after inter-cluster handoff. It employs rapid path extension, followed by path optimization to establish the new connection. Since the extended path is longer than the original one, certain Quality of Service (QoS) requirements such as cell transfer delay and cell delay variation may not be guaranteed after handoff and depend largely on the speed of the optimization process service. In this paper, we propose an efficient and fast rerouting scheme. The reserved Permanent Virtual Channels (PVCs) are used in the first phase to avoid handoff latency and in the second phase the optimization process is triggered instantly, concurrently with other active connections. The main objective of our scheme is to minimize the route optimization delay such that the QoS parameters will not be affected. Both analytical and simulation models are presented to evaluate the overall system performance in terms of wired link resources and route optimization delay.