A power threshold based policy for vertical handoff in heterogeneous networks

Vertical handoff of multi-interface mobile hosts is one of the most significant challenges for the next generation heterogeneous wireless networks. Several vertical handoff policies have been proposed to decide the target network for each active application in a mobile host (MH), but no careful consideration is given to manage the relationship among multiple handoff decision processes of all these applications. In order to solve this problem, a power threshold based handoff policy is proposed, in which the battery duration of the MH is taken into account, and flexible control of multiple handoff decision processes of the ongoing applications is realized. Performance analysis and numerical simulation demonstrate that, by adjusting the power threshold defined in our policy, various degrees of compromise can be achieved between the spectral efficiency of the heterogeneous networks and the battery duration of the MH.