Smart buffering technique for lossless hard handover in wireless ATM networks

The introduction of ATM technology in wireless environments, allowing mobile terminals to support multimedia traffic, is a subject of significant interest. Towards this objective, the mobility procedures need to be designed in an efficient way that will minimize the QoS deterioration, imposed by the movement of the users. This paper discusses the network architecture, its constituent functional entities, as well as the algorithms needed in support of mobility. In order to achieve minimum impact on the connection quality when a user crosses the boundaries of a cell, a so called "smart buffering technique" has been designed. Throughout the proposed design, special provision has been taken to minimize modifications or extensions, required on existing fixed ATM infrastructure. In this respect, existing versions of B-ISDN signaling protocols (Q.2931, ATMP UNI 3.1) are considered, which are enhanced by a supplementary mobility related protocol.