IEEE 802.11 Handovers Assisted by GPS Information

IEEE 802.11 networks are now very common and are present in various locations. While roaming through access points, a mobile node is often required to perform a link layer handover. This mechanism causes user-interceptable connection loss and breaks in time-sensitive communication, especially if a network layer handover follows the link layer handover. Many solutions attempting to improve this process have been proposed but only a few use geolocation systems in the management of the handover. In this article, we present a new method to enhance both link layer and network layer handovers using geolocation information provided by a GPS system. The idea behind our algorithm is to predict the next mobile node point of attachment and the associated sub-network using the position of the mobile nodes. This method has been implemented using the new Mobile IP daemon for GNU/Linux operating system and evaluated through two scenarios