A Velocity-Based Bicasting Handover Scheme for 4G Mobile Systems

We propose a velocity-based bicasting handover scheme to efficiently utilize backhaul network resources in Fourth-generation (4G) mobile systems. The conventional bicasting scheme makes all potential target base stations hold the user data, thus it can achieve seamless connectivity by minimizing the packet fluctuation delay caused by handover. This scheme, however, leads to an aggressive consumption of resources at the backhaul network. When this scheme is widely adopted for real-time services and the demand for these services increase, the amount of backhaul network resources consumed due to bicasting will also increase tremendously. Therefore, we proposed a velocity-based bicasting scheme which reduces the bicasting time and thus, improves the backhaul network resource utilization. Our scheme uses a novel concept of bicasting threshold determined on the basis of specific mobile speed groups. The simulation results prove the efficiency of our scheme in overcoming the aggressive resource consumption at the backhaul network.