Signaling mechanisms for handoff control in mobile ATM networks

This paper presents a generic signaling mechanism for handoff control in ATM networks. In the past, signaling mechanisms for handoff control have been proposed in a very protocol dependent way. Each protocol is characterized by its distinct way to identify crossover switch (COS) and implemented in a signaling syntax different from the other protocols. In this paper, we propose a common signaling syntax which is independent of handoff control protocols being used. With this syntax, we can (1) make standardization of handoff control being protocol independent, (2) have a common evaluation base for different protocols and (3) implement signaling mechanism for handoff in a common software framework. The signaling syntax is defined as an extension to ATM UNI/NNI signaling specification and the descriptions for messages, states and signaling sequence are given in details.