Service-differentiated handoff protocol (SDHP)

The future mobile Internet will provide various data services with different QoS requirements to roaming users. Due to the limited wireless transmission range, handoff is essential and a major determinant of QoS. We propose a service-differentiated handoff protocol (SDHP). Two handoff schemes are implemented, forwarding and multicasting. Different schemes may be selected according to the type of ongoing traffic flow. Thus, different requirements on traffic flows can be satisfied and the overall network throughput can be maximized. In addition, our simulation results show that, within acceptable QoS limits, SDHP can achieve better performance than single-scheme protocols such as HAWAII-MSF and MMP.