Performance evaluation of prioritized handoff schemes in mobile cellular networks

This paper deals with the performance analysis of two prioritized handoff schemes for mobile cellular networks in which handoff attempts finding all channels busy are queued for a maximum time. Fixed channel assignment is assumed. In the first prioritized handoff scheme considered, handoff attempts are queued according to the first-in-first-out (FIFO) policy. Conversely, the second scheme resorts to an ideal nonpreemptive priority queueing policy to enhance system performance. Differently from previous works, in this paper the performance analysis is carried out on the basis of a model which takes into account the event that a call may terminate when the mobile user is waiting for a handoff. Comparisons with simulation results and analytical predictions derived by means of alternative approaches highlight a better estimation accuracy for the proposed method. Moreover, it is also demonstrated here that the FIFO policy allows performance very close to that of the ideal prioritized handoff scheme and, hence, that it is a solution suitable for applications in mobile cellular networks where a high service quality is required.