QoS aware fuzzy rule based vertical handoff decision algorithm for wireless heterogeneous networks

Increasing demands of ubiquitous services in wireless networks and evolution towards heterogeneous solutions has driven the necessity of developing efficient QoS aware vertical handoff (handoff between different networks) mechanisms. This paper proposes a QoS aware fuzzy rule based vertical handoff mechanism that makes a multi-criteria based decision, found to be effective for meeting the requirements of different applications. The QoS parameters considered are available bandwidth, end-to-end delay, jitter, and bit error rate (BER). A new evaluation model is proposed using a non birth-death Markov chain, in which the states correspond to the available networks. Simulation results show that compared to other vertical handoff algorithms, the proposed algorithm gives better performance for different traffic classes.